She guarded carefully a mossy bundle in her
black silk lap. A little distance from her Thompson was fastening a
flower into Mrs. Horton's dress, and close to the gate stood the
Policeman, smoking a pipe and watching everybody with obvious
contentment. His belt was loose; both hands stuck into it; he leaned
against the wooden fence.
On the ground, between the tree and the fence, the Tramp had made a
fire. He lay crouched about it. He and the fire belonged to one
another. It seemed that he was dozing.
And this sense of lying in the heart of an enormous circular interval
touched everybody with delicious peace; each had apparently found
something real, and was content merely to lie and--be with it. All
came gradually to sitting or reclining postures. Yet there was no
sense of fatigue; any instant they would be up again and looking.
Occasionally one or other of them spoke, but it was not the kind of
speech that struggled to express difficult ideas with tedious
sentences of many words. There was very little to _say_: mere
statements of indubitable reality could be so easily and briefly made.
"Now," said Tim, unafraid of contradiction.
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