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Moon Shiny Dreams.

Tonight, we'll read about the love between a kennel maid, who is betrothed to a confirmed

bachelor. It comes from the opening to the 1928 novel by Eden Philpott's titled Children of Men.

Philpott's was an English author who maintained a steady output of more than three books a year for half a century.

Many of his novels were about rural life. Eden is best known as the author of many novels, plays and poems about Dartmoor.

His Dartmoor cycle of 18 novels and two volumes of short stories still has many avid readers, despite the fact that many titles were out of print.

Let's get cozy, close your eyes, relax your body into the softness of your pen.

Now, take a few deep breaths.

On a day in high summer, the valley was full of light, and on a river, her moorland journey ended, bowed under a plantation of pine and fur, then sparkled forth,

to learn what welcome awaited her in the lower lands.

Above the stream, easterly, a green hill towered against the sky.

Stunted thorns broke the sweep of the eagle fern, grey rock clitters spread, and cloud shadows drifted over all,

to cool the brightness.

A woodmast beneath in the mouth of the veil, and from this dusky retreat, there leapt the river in a succession of planes broken at each little fall by an apron of granite.

Here the ripples flashed with foam. Here the blue of the sky was caught in the gliding surface between, where honest tresses twined soberly,

and fern, hather, wood rush cast their reflections into our tremorous mirror.

Two stone shelves presently barred the waterway, and, leaping one, the river made a circular sweep above the second, and eddyed in a little backwater.

The later ledge was gentle, and its steps sloped to three feet above the stream.

It was fringed with herbitch and flowers, and here, on a loitered, making shadows for fingerling trout to play in.

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