It was a stifling August afternoon. Not a breath of wind came over
the downs, and the sky was just a great flaming oven inverted over
them. I sat down under a dusty gorse-bush (no tree could be seen)
beside the high-road, and tugging off a boot, searched for a prickle
that somehow had got into it. Then, finding myself too hot to pull
the boot on again, I turned out some crumbs of tobacco from a
waistcoat pocket, lit my pipe, and unbuckled my pack.
I "travel" in Tracts, edifying magazines, and books on the Holy Land;
but in Tracts especially. As Watteau painted the ladies and
cavaliers of Versailles so admirably, because he despised them, so I
will sell a Tract against any man alive. Also, if there be one kind
of Tract that I loathe more than another, it is the Pink Tract.
Paper of that colour is sacred to the Loves--to stolen kisses and
assignations--and to see it with a comminatory text tacked on at the
foot of the page turns my stomach. I have served in my time many
different masters, and mistresses; and it still pleases me, after
quitting their service, to recognise the distinction between their
dues. So it must have been the heat that made me select a Pink
Tract. I leant back with my head in the shadow to digest its crude
absurdity.
It was entitled, "_How infernally Hot!_" I doubt not the words were
put in the mouth of some sinner, and the moral dwelt on their literal
significance. But half-way down the first page sleep must have
descended on me: and I woke up to the sound of light footsteps.
_Pit-a-pat--pit-a-pat-a-pit-pat_. I lifted my head.
Two small children were coming along the road towards me,
hand-in-hand, through the heat--a boy and a girl; who, drawing near
and spying my long legs sprawling out into the dust, came to a stand,
finger in mouth.
"Hullo, my dears!" I called out, "what are you doing out in this
weather?"
The children stared at one another, and were silent. The girl was
about eight years old, wore a smart pink frock and sash, a big pink
sun-bonnet, and carried an apple with a piece bitten out. She seemed
a little lady; whereas the boy wore corduroys and a battered straw
hat, and was a clod. Both children were exceedingly dusty and hot in
the cheeks.