A GARDEN DIARY 77 



to carry its own justification. As it happens 

 I was out yesterday in a rather exceptionally 

 imposing hail-storm. It was so dry that there 

 was no occasion to hurry, and I stood still for 

 a while to study effects. The stones, as they 

 pattered and rattled round me, might danger 

 apart have quite served as a suggestion of the 

 other sort of rattling and pattering. Looking 

 at them dispassionately I inquired of myself, 

 "Would one run?" and Truth there being no 

 one else present promptly replied, " Madly ! " 

 So, save for the grace of acquired training, I 

 take it would nearly everybody. My hail bullets 

 seemed to be in a prodigious hurry, and were 

 being prodigally, if not very scientifically, directed 

 by marksmen concealed somewhere above Leith 

 hill. They hissed, they danced, they ricochetted 

 off the trees, they bespattered the ground in all 

 directions in a very businesslike and realistic 

 fashion. There was a good deal of snow still 

 lying unmelted in corners, and into that snow 

 the new-comers as they fell cut deep little pits, 

 and disappeared from sight in an instant. Else- 

 where they drove in white flocks over the ground, 

 hardly melting at all. They were not quite so 

 large as carrots, as someone assured me that he 

 had once seen hailstones, but they were certainly 

 as large as fair -sized gooseberries. Through 

 such a furious hail only appropriately black 



