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Beside the fence stretched long, narrow, rounded hillocks, free

from trees, bushes, and flowers: this was the cucumber patch.

They had grown finely; with their great, spreading leaves they

covered the beds as with a wrinkled carpet. Amid them walked a

girl, dressed in white, sinking up to her knees in the May

greenery; stepping down from the beds into the furrows, she

seemed not to walk but to swim over the leaves and to bathe in

their bright colour. Her head was shaded with a straw hat, from

her brow there waved two pink ribbons and some tresses of bright,

loose hair; in her hands she held a basket, and her eyes were

lowered; her right hand was raised as if to pluck something: as a

little girl when bathing tries to catch the fishes that sport

with her tiny feet, so she at every instant bent down with her

hands and her basket to gather the cucumbers against which she

brushed with her foot, or of which her eye caught sight.