summer noons
This is only meant as a sample of the kind of way they used to think or talk , when the narrow sulky turned in at the gate of some house where there was a visit to be made . Oh , that narrow sulky ! What hopes , what fears , what comfort , what anguish , what despair , in the roll of its coming or its parting wheels ! In the spring , when the old people get the coughs which give them a few shakes and their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred , -- in the hot summer noons , when the strong man comes in from the fields , like the son of the Shunamite , crying , `` My head , my head , '' -- in the dying autumn days , when youth and maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household , still-faced , dull-eyed , dark-flushed , dry-lipped , low-muttering in their daylight dreams , their fingers moving singly like those of slumbering harpers , -- in the dead winter , when the white plague of the North has caged its wasted victims , shuddering as they think of the frozen soil which must be quarried like rock to receive them , if their perpetual convalescence should happen to be interfered with by any untoward accident , -- at every season , the narrow sulky rolled round freighted with unmeasured burdens of joy and woe . The Doctor drove along the southern foot of The Mountain . The `` Dudley Mansion '' was near the eastern edge of this declivity , where it rose steepest , with baldest cliffs and densest patches of overhanging wood . It seemed almost too steep to climb , but a practised eye could see from a distance the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like miniature Alpine roads .