APPOINTMENTS 



IT is a narrow, winding street, with house-cliffs three 

 times as tall as the way is wide, and an average of 

 four people abreast jostling on a two-yard pavement. 

 There are three or four up-river towns that can fill the 

 specification, and we need not say which one is this. 

 There is blue sky overhead, and as we turn a corner 

 we come suddenly on a basket of mimosa and daffo- 

 dils standing in the sun. Still later, the odour of 

 them reaches us a hot, enlivening scent of pollen 

 and honey, both of them manifestations of sunshine. 

 Dingy houses all round, rent, as it were, with this 

 glory of pale gold emitting the very glory and com- 

 fort of paradise. And, hanging before the golden 

 blooms, two eager bees, free merchants in this world 

 of marketing, hesitating in so rich a world as to which 

 cup to enter and pillage. The blooms are from 

 Scilly, and the bees from some garden up there and 

 down there beyond the houses that seem to end the 

 world. 



These bees, one of which, to the astonishment of 

 the flower-vender, we catch, inspect, and release, 

 represent one of the wheels of spring. At the right 

 time, neither a day too soon nor a day too late, they 

 awake, or are born (for they come from the chrysalis), 

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