Country Life
WII awoke to snow. Its glare was on the ceiling as soon as there was light, but at first I did not think that snow had been falling during the night. I was puzzled at the silence. Usually birds are twittering in the trees across the road at daybreak and their attempts at song arc the first thing I hear. I saw the snow-laden conifers, the half-black, half- white oaks and beeches, and the tracks of early traffic on the road, and I thought of the lambs up on the hill. Only last week I had been hearing how well they had been doing. No doubt those horn at the beginning of the month are strong by now, but I wondered about the lambs born when the raindrops on the fence were frozen and snow fastened to everything like cake-icing. Later in the morn- ing I looked at the slate roofs lower down in the village. They were still snugly covered, which I took to be a had sign. Snow holds longer on a tiled roof but there is some indication of its persistence when it fails to slip from slates. It looked as though we might have a day or two of such weather. The far hills were obscured and the woods indistinct in a haze of snow.
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