Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

train crawled doubtfully over the great whiteness.
While they were so poor, the children were delighted if they
could do anything to help economically. Annie and Paul and Arthur
went out early in the morning, in summer, looking for mushrooms,
hunting through the wet grass, from which the larks were rising,
for the white-skinned, wonderful naked bodies crouched secretly in
the green. And if they got half a pound they felt exceedingly happy:
there was the joy of finding something, the joy of accepting something
straight from the hand of Nature, and the joy of contributing to
the family exchequer.
But the most important harvest, after gleaning for frumenty,
was the blackberries. Mrs. Morel must buy fruit for puddings on
the Saturdays; also she liked blackberries. So Paul and Arthur scoured
the coppices and woods and old quarries, so long as a blackberry
was to be found, every week-end going on their search. In that
region of mining villages blackberries became a comparative rarity.
But Paul hunted far and wide. He loved being out in the country,
among the bushes. But he also could not bear to go home to his
mother empty. That, he felt, would disappoint her, and he would