On my side of the stream wandered a path close to the water's edge--so
close that I could fill my water-cups without leaving my
sketching-stool. Over this path, striped with shadows, big trees
towered, their gnarled branches interlaced above my head. On my right,
rising out of a green sward cleared of all underbrush, towered other
trees, their black trunks sharp-cut against the haze. In the distance,
side by side with the path, wound the river, still asleep, save where it
flashed into waves of silver laughter at the touch of some frolicsome
puff of wind. Elsewhere, although the sun was now hours high, it dozed
away, nestling under the overhanging branches making their morning
toilet in its depths. But for these long, straight flashes of silver
light glinting between the tree-trunks, one could not tell where the
haze ended and the river began.
As I worked on, my white umbrella tilted at the exact angle so that my
palette, hand, and canvas would be hidden from the inquisitive sun, a
group of figures emerged from a clump of low trees, and made their way
across the green sward--the man in an ivory-black coat, evidently a
priest, even at that distance; the woman in a burnt-umber dress with a
dot of Chinese white for a head--probably a cap; and the third, a girl
of six or eight in a brown madder dress and yellow-ochre hat.
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