her black hair loose and a-float down her dazzling white neck

Sunday was the day we'd get to wear / Our best trousers and shirts, our spickest shoes, / To the chapel's echoing hush.

But how and why are hard to say or even see. There are cases of ununderstanding mediated by the use of special words but this is not apt to be one of them.

Old Percy, with fixed, mad blue eye and a rusty scythe, was attacking the Japanese creeper bambooey plant which had shot up green in the alley by the drive.