This day, however, Clifford wanted to send a message to the keeper, and as the boy was laid up with influenza⁠—somebody always seemed to have influenza at Wragby⁠—Connie said she would call at the cottage.

The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were slowly dying. Grey and clammy and silent, even from the shuffling of the collieries, for the pits were working short time, and today they were stopped altogether. The end of all things!

In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell from the bare boughs, with a hollow little crash. For the rest, among the old trees was depth within depth of grey, hopeless, inertia, silence, nothingness.