Then she would throw herself down on the thick grass and look up in mystic rapture at the brooding blue sky and forget to read the book she had brought with her, while the other children chased one another about in savage delight.

Only once on a Saturday afternoon when her father was not with them, did she get Dutch Debby to break through her retired habits and accompany them, and then it was not summer but late autumn.
There was an indefinable melancholy about the sere landscape.

Russet refuse strewed the paths and the gaunt trees waved fleshless arms in the breeze.

The November haze rose from the moist ground and dulled the blue of heaven with smoky clouds amid which the sun, a red sailless boat, floated at anchor among golden and crimson furrows and glimmering far-dotted fleeces.

The small lake was slimy, reflecting the trees on its borders as a network of dirty branches.