On a frosty morning with a little February sun, Clifford and Connie went for a walk across the park to the wood. That is, Clifford chuffed in his motor-chair, and Connie walked beside him.
The hard air was still sulphurous, but they were both used to it. Round the near horizon went the haze¹, opalescent² with frost and smoke, and on the top lay the small blue sky; so that it was like being inside an enclosure, always inside. Life always a dream or a frenzy³, inside an enclosure.

The sheep coughed in the rough, sere⁴ grass of the park, where frost lay bluish in the sockets⁵ of the tufts. Across the park ran a path to the wood-gate, a fine ribbon of pink. Clifford had had it newly gravelled with sifted⁷ gravel⁶ from the pit-bank. When the rock and refuse of the underworld had burned and given off its sulphur, it turned bright pink, shrimp-coloured on dry days, darker, crab-coloured on wet. Now it was pale shrimp-colour, with a bluish-white hoar of frost. It always pleased Connie, this underfoot of sifted, bright pink. It's an ill wind that brings nobody good.

Clifford steered⁸ cautiously down the slope of the knoll⁹ from the hall, and Connie kept her hand on the chair. In front lay the wood, the hazel thicket¹⁰ nearest, the purplish density¹¹ of oaks beyond. From the wood's edge rabbits bobbed and nibbled

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