20 IN THE GREEN LEAF 



from all the winds that blow. Crab-trees in all 

 their glorious wealth of bloom, pink-tufted, 

 brought out in fine relief by the rich waxen 

 green of the young foliage, stand here and 

 there in the hedges that bound some of the 

 meadows, whilst the wild-cherries, the guignes, 

 as they are still called, from their stem forma- 

 tion and the set of their branches, look, when 

 in blossom, like great cones of drifted snow. 

 Kingcups, and the faint tinted cookoo-flowers, 

 show out bravely from the dark green grass 

 over which the swallows are dashing in all 

 directions. Presently a couple come and settle 

 on one of the telegraph wires the swallow and 

 his mate, in all the sheen of their nesting 

 plumage, that has been perfected, it may be, 

 by the shore of some African lagoon, where 

 the birds that rested in hundreds on the washed- 

 up drift had only to move about and pick up at 

 leisure the teeming insect life that frequented it. 

 With a twitter he caresses her, then he 

 throws one wing out as far as he can stretch 

 it, then the other ; after that the long shaft 

 feathers of the tail are preened. But some- 

 thing is not quite right ; he seems to think 

 that the under side of one wing is not quite 

 to his satisfaction. When this little matter is 



