The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
Sing, pretty birds, she may not lower.
Ah me I methinks I see her frown:
Ye pretty wantons, warble. —Thomas Heywood.
A LITTLE before noon one sunny morning, shortly after Simon’s interview with the
Squire, Rachel Charnock was walking briskly through one of the plantations which
abutted on the park. Everything was bright and fresh and gay this April day, and Rachel,
as she walked, sang to herself for pure blitheness of heart. The trees had recovered their
recent severe usage by the wind, and seemed to have decked themselves afresh with
tenderest green; and the flowers beneath, laid flat by the storm, now sprang up gaily
once more. The double daffodils were gone, indeed, but here were the Lent lilies, with
airy wings outspread, and golden cups shining as though filled with flame; here was the
celandine, a very shower of stars; and there were actually primroses in bud, and forgetme-nots
in full bloom.
Rachel loved the old place, with that clinging, intimate fondness which is given only to
the first home; the familiar outlines of tree and hedgerow were to her as the features of a
friend; a broken branch, an unexpected gap, each was to her a disfigurement to be
lamented over; she gazed on them with a little shock of disappointment
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as one might mark the wrinkles in a beloved face.
One may, therefore, imagine her surprise and indignation when, on emerging from the
woods, she found that a very great change, indeed, was about to take place in one
portion of the park. A long brown line already clove the dewy green as far as her eye
could reach, and travelling slowly towards her was a two-horse plough, while in the
distance its double was at work.
She stopped short, catching her breath; then hurried forward with flashing eyes to
inquire further into this unprecedented state of affairs. To plough up the park! Had such
a thing ever been heard of before in the annals of Charnleigh? What desecration! What
humiliation!