TIME PASSESbad after he fell from the cart; and perhaps then noone for a year, or the better part of one; and thenDavie Macdonald, and seeds might be sent, but whoshould say if they were ever planted? They’d find itchanged. She watched her son scything. He was a greatone for work — one of those quiet ones. Well theymust be getting along with the cupboards, she sup-posed. They hauled themselves up.

At last, after days of labour within, of cutting anddigging without, dusters were flicked from the windows,the windows were shut to, keys were turned all overthe house; the front door was banged; it was finished.

And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing andthe scything and the mowing had drowned it thererose that half-heard melody, that intermittent musicwhich the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, ableat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related;the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, dissev-ered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dor beetle,the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriouslyrelated; which the ear strains to bring together andis always on the verge of harmonising but they arenever quite heard, never fully harmonised, and atlast, in the evening, one after another the sounds dieout, and the harmony falters, and silence falls. Withthe sunset sharpness was lost, and like mist rising,quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely theworld shook itself down to sleep, darkly here withouta light to it, save what came green suffused throughleaves, or pale on the white flowers by the window.

[Lily Briscoe had her bag carried up to the houselate one evening in September. Mr. Carmichael cameby the same train].165
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