COUNTRY LIFE
Now that the schools are open, the village streets are quiet for an hour or two both morning and afternoon, and the mothers of the children that were setting up a clamour to rival the rooks a week or two ago find these hours strangely quiet, and stand talking a little longer on their way to and from the post office' or the grocer's shop. Towards four o'clock the school doors open, and soon the children are spreading outwards, along the lane to search for chestnuts, across the field to •kick a ball and stealthily through the hedge to rob the orchard. Like the sugar-hungry wasps, some have an instinct for the tree that bears the sweetest fruit, but it is often a lightning raid and many a one goes home with apples as hard as unripe sloes and not much sweeter. The season's game when school is out is conkers, but the more energetic seem to be in love with wooden swords and wooden daggers and go fighting their way across the stony decks of a pirate ship that stretches as far as the road. The battle is never lost and never won and the crew has casualties and is reinforced as one goes home to tea and another steps out to join in the fray. The shrieks and yells and laughter are no less in the short time before night than all the noise of one day when the school was closed.
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