midday
Many were the things shouted to them as they tramped along , for in 2100 a foot-passenger on an English road was almost as strange a sight as a motor car would have been in 1800 . But they went on with steadfast eyes into the country , paying no heed to such cries . Before them in the south rose the Downs , blue at first , and as they came nearer changing to green , surmounted by the row of gigantic wind-wheels that supplemented the wind-wheels upon the roof-spaces of the city , and broken and restless with the long morning shadows of those whirling vanes . By midday they had come so near that they could see here and there little patches of pallid dots -- the sheep the Meat Department of the Food Company owned . In another hour they had passed the clay and the root crops and the single fence that hedged them in , and the prohibition against trespass no longer held : the levelled roadway plunged into a cutting with all its traffic , and they could leave it and walk over the greensward and up the open hillside . Never had these children of the latter days been together in such a lonely place . They were both very hungry and footsore -- for walking was a rare exercise -- and presently they sat down on the weedless , close-cropped grass , and looked back for the first time at the city from which they had come , shining wide and splendid in the blue haze of the valley of the Thames .