Ross + 

Ross finished the drawing of a plant that grew in whorls and spirals and tendrils and bracts. The naturalist had trained the painter. He copied it exactly. Tomorrow he would do it differently, double it, halve it, add six to it, make a picture out of repetitions of a stalk. + 

It was very late. The hardly perceptible noise of his pencil was all he had for company. He went into the kitchen to look for bread and cheese. A candle was lit in a tin lantern, there was a fire-stain on the floor. Nanna, long in bed, had left her sewing. + 

There was an old woman and she sat spinning, + 

And still she sat and still she span, and still she wished for company. + 

He grinned at the old nurse’s horror-story, went back to the studio and watered one of the shallow pans stuck with the seeds he had gathered tramping Europe. A bee-orchid had come up: an odd-scented herb from a pass on the Pyrenees: a rare lily was over. Whenever he touched it life grew. Plants and dogs and children. Eggs hatched. And men? They were there to make him laugh. If they found rest in him, he was indifferent as Nature, and in general as kind. + 

He loosened the earth pricked by a hairy spike, tossed a pebble away, opened a window. A bird disturbed brushed him without alarm. An owl sailed by, curved over at the house-corner and skimmed down the wood. A dark grey night, brimming with business. His portfolio under his arm for a picture-book, he went up to bed. + 