Literary Adaptation no 2

Whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows borne, the peace of Hawker’s Pot could not be broken. The old quiet moss smell would linger in the air, and bees would come, and crickets, and herons build their nests in the deep dark woods. There would be quips and repartee still, and the hard white buds of the inevitable puns unfolding slow and tight beneath the dining-room window. It would lie always in a hollow like an enchanted thing, guarded by its jokes, safe, secure, while the laughter broke and ran and came again in the little shingle bays below.

(adapted from du Maurier: Rebecca)