Gone to Earth by Mary Webb — Read

In the early morning of Midsummer Eve, Hazel wandered up the hill-slopes. There the sheep, golden, and gospel-like in the early light, fed on wet lawns pale and unsubstantial as gauze. She did not, as the more self-conscious creatures of civilization would have done, envy their peace in so many words. But she did say wistfully to a particularly ample and contented one, 'You'm pretty comfortable, binna you?' When she went in to breakfast she thought the same of Mrs. Marston.

Afterwards they picked black currants, Mrs. Marston seated on a camp-stool and wearing her large mushroom hat, which always tilted slightly and made her look rakish. Whenever a blackbird dashed out of the grove of half-ripe red currants, scolding with demoniac vitality, she would look up and say, 'Naughty bird.' She picked with deliberation, and placed the currants in the basket with an air of benediction. The day was hot and splendid, a day to make the leaves limp and crack the flower-beds. But it was cool in the shadow of the mountain-ash that grew near the currants, and a breeze laden with wild thyme and moss fragrance played about the garden like an invisible child.