I dare say theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I shouldn't wonder if it were!"
I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs. Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand, they rarely presented themselves at all.
The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year's leaves, where there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped off. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through which we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard thunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle through the leaves.

; but they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence. I shouldn't wonder if it were!"
I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs. Skimpole and the children. So far as I could understand, they were rarely present in his mind at all.
A week passed; and every day had been so bright and blue that to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs, had been most delightful. We had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year's leaves, where there were some felled trees. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by thousands of natural columns. On Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard thunder muttering in the distance and felt large raindrops rattle through the leaves.
