midday
But the day had brought no heaviness to the sky , blue without a cloud , only a grave and increasing heat , a sun which blinded the eyes and seemed to take no account of anything save its steady purpose of ripening the fruit and grain . Looking round one saw that it was not an impressive country . There were no hills , no grandeurs , no proximity to the sea . It was a country whose pageants were made , not by great heights or sombre woods , but by the orderly and coloured procession of the harvests ; where one recovered the preoccupied sight of little children , seeing so much to absorb one near the ground that one did not seek the horizon ; where matters were measured and done not by the clock but by the sun 's height , by midday heat and darkness , by the lowing of cows or the calling of lambs . A woman , well on the way to middle age , sat in the house-place of a small cottage on the white high-road . Everything had been done for the night , the pigs and pony fed ; the cow milked and the milk strained ; the churn cleaned and the cream standing . The hens had been driven in and were almost asleep on their perches .