ABOUT THIS EPISODE
At every step one's movements keep flushing the sparrows which always make their home in these depths, and one hears their fussy chirping and the beating of their tiny, fluttering wings against the stalks, and catches the low buzzing of a bumble bee somewhere, and the sound of the gardener's footsteps (it is half-daft Akim) on the path as he hums his eternal sing-song to himself. Then one mutters under one's breath, "No! Neither he nor any one else shall find me here!" yet still one goes on stripping juicy berries from their conical white pilasters, and cramming them into one's mouth. At length, one's legs soaked to the knees as one repeats, over and over again, some rubbish which keeps running in one's head, and one's hands and nether limbs (despite the protection of one's wet trousers) thoroughly stung with the nettles, one comes to the conclusion that the sun's rays are beating too straight upon one's head for eating to be any longer desirable, and, sinking down into the tangle of greenery, one remains there looking and listening, and continuing in mechanical fashion to strip off one or two of the finer berries and swallow them.
