THE RUN OF THE DOWNS The Weald is good, the Downs are best- Ditchling Beacon and Chanctonbury Ring, And what those two have missed between 'em The Downs are sheep, the Weald is corn, THE KNIFE AND THE NAKED CHALK HE children went to the seaside for a month, THE and lived in a flint village on the bare windy chalk Downs, quite thirty miles away from home. They made friends with an old shepherd, called Mr. Dudeney, who had known their father when their father was little. He did not talk like their own people in the Weald of Sussex, and he used different names for farm things, but he understood how they felt, and let them go with him. He had a tiny cottage about half a mile from the village, where his wife made mead from thyme honey, and nursed sick lambs in front of a coal fire, while Old Jim, who was Mr. Dudeney's sheep-dog's father, lay at the door. They brought up beef bones for Old Jim (you must never give a sheep-dog mutton bones), and if Mr. Dudeney happened to be far in the Downs, Mrs. Dudeney would tell the dog to take them to him, and he did. One August afternoon when the village watercart had made the street smell specially townified, they went to look for their shepherd as usual, and, as usual, Old Jim crawled over the door-step and took them in charge. The sun was hot, the dry grass was very slippery, and the distances were very distant. "It's just like the sea," said Una, when Old Jim halted in the shade of a lonely flint barn on a bare rise. "You see where you're going, and-you go there, and there's nothing between." Dan slipped off his shoes. "When we get home I shall sit in the woods all day," he said. "Whuff!" said Old Jim, to show he was ready, and struck across a long rolling stretch of turf. Presently he asked for his beef bone. "Not yet," said Dan. "Where's Mr. Dudeney? Where's master?" Old Jim looked as if he thought they were mad, and asked again. "Don't you give it him," Una cried. “I'm not going to be left howling in a desert." "Show, boy! Show!" said Dan, for the Downs seemed as bare as the palm of your hand. Old Jim sighed, and trotted forward. Soon they spied the blob of Mr. Dudeney's hat against the sky a long way off. "Right! All right!" said Dan. Old Jim wheeled round, took his bone carefully between his blunted teeth, and returned to the shadow of the old barn, looking just like a wolf. The children went on. Two kestrels hung bivvering and squealing above them. A gull flapped lazily along the white edge of the cliffs. The curves of the Downs shook a little in the heat, and so did Mr. Dudeney's distant head. They walked toward it very slowly and found themselves staring into a horse-shoe-shaped hollow a hundred feet deep, whose steep sides were laced with tangled sheep-tracks. The flock grazed on the flat at the bottom, under charge of Young Jim. Mr. Dudeney sat comfortably knitting on the edge of the slope, his crook between his knees. They told him what Old Jim had done. “Ah, he thought you could see my head as soon as he did. The closeter you be to the turf the more you see things. You look warm-like," said Mr. Dudeney. "We be," said Una, flopping down. "And tired." "Set beside o' me here. The shadow'll begin to stretch out in a little while, and a heat-shake o' wind will come up with it that'll overlay your eyes like so much wool." "We don't want to sleep," said Una indignantly; but she settled herself as she spoke, in the first strip of early afternoon shade. "O' course not. You come to talk with me same as your father used. He didn't need no dog to guide him to Norton Pit." "Well, he belonged here," said Dan, and laid himself down at length on the turf. |