All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt
and unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered.  Walton, by virtue
of its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along
the line.  The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped
mass of red weed, in appearance between butcher's meat and pickled
cabbage.  The Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons
of the red climber.  Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in
certain nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the
sixth cylinder.  A number of people were standing about it, and some
sappers were busy in the midst of it.  Over it flaunted a Union Jack,
flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze.  The nursery grounds were
everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut
with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye.  One's gaze went
with infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the
foreground to the blue-green softness of the eastward hills.