1 64 A GARDEN DIARY 



would bend down to kiss her small pink feet. So 

 encompassed she would come to meet us along 

 the wood paths, a vision of grace and maidenly 

 beauty ; the traditional smile on her lips, the 

 equally traditional tear in her eye. She would 

 look up in our faces with an appealing glance, 

 and then begin suddenly to weep, she herself 

 knew not why. A maiden with the most maidenly 

 of dreams, enclosing a whole enchanted world of 

 visionary hopes, fears, delights, anticipations, which 

 it would be the dull business of Experience to 

 dissipate as the year rolled on. 



But April, as she presents herself before us 

 this year, is not that sort of maiden at all. She 

 is a remarkably uncompromising sort of young 

 woman, with hardly any visible green about her 

 costume. She does not care for the colour 

 apparently, but prefers drabs, and greys, and 

 browns. As for tears she is not nearly as much 

 oiven to them as we could desire. She thinks 



o 



poorly of them evidently, and considers them out 

 of date. Her smiles too are doled out in the 

 same penurious fashion as her tears. She gives 

 us what no doubt she considers our due of both, 

 but nothing to spare. Her impulses are all dull, 

 decorous, mechanical ; as for her feet, far from 

 being bare, they are clad in warm winter shoes 

 and stockings, which indeed they have every 

 reason to be. 



Doubtless I am old-fashioned, but I cannot 



