It is September, as I have before said.  The leaves are still all green, only a stray bramble reddening here and there; but most of the midsummer hedge-row peoples are gathered to their rest.  Only a lagging few, the slight-throated blue-bell, the uncouth ragwort, the little, tight scabious, remain.  At least, the berries are here, however.  While each red hip shows where a faint rose blossomed and fell; while the elder holds stoutly aloft her flat, black clusters; while the briony clasps the hawthorn-hedge, we cannot complain.  Not only the main things of Nature, but all her odds and ends, are so exceedingly fair and daintily wrought.

It is one of those days that look charming, when seen through the window; bright and sunny, with lights that fly, and shadows that pursue; but it is a very different matter when one comes to feel it.  There is a bleak, keen wind, that sends the clouds racing through the heavens, and that blows right in our teeth; nearly strangling me by the violence with which it takes held of my head.

There has been no rain for a week or two, and it is a chalky country.  The dust is waltzing in white whirlwinds along the road.  High up as we are, it reaches us, and thrusts its fine and choking powder up our noses.

“I suppose,” say I, doubtfully, looking up at the shifting uncertainty of the heavens, and trying to speak in a sprightly tone, a feat which I find rather hard of accomplishment, with such a blast cutting my eyes, and making me gasp—­“I suppose that it will not rain!”

“Rain! not it!” replies our coachman, with contemptuous cheerfulness.

“The glass was going down!” I say, humbly, “and I think I felt a drop just now!”

“Impossible! it could not rain with this wind.”

He says this with such a jovial and robust certainty of scorn, that I am half inclined to distrust the sky’s evidence—­to disbelieve even in the big drop that so indisputably splashed into my eye just now.  “But in case it does rain,” continue I, pertinaciously, “I suppose that there is a house near, or some place where we can take refuge?”

“No, there is no house nearer than a couple of miles”—­making the statement with the easiest composure—­“but it will not rain.”

“Perhaps”—­say I, with a sinking heart—­“there is a wood—­trees?”

“Well, no, there is not much in the way of trees—­except Scotch firs—­ there are plenty of them—­it is a bare sort of place—­that is the beauty of it, you know”—­(with a tone of confident pride)—­“there is a monstrously fine view from it!—­one can see seven counties!”

“Yes,” say I, faintly, “so I have heard!”