128 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



masses that crown the hedge. The pointed brown 

 buds of red campion are bursting into flowers of their 

 own exclusive pink, adorning the speckled shade 

 with the ever-loved " billy-buttons " of village lore. 

 Another broad-leaved, straight-stalked plant has 

 opened its cruciform flowers of Whitsuntide white 

 that proclaim it "Jack by the hedge." And hark 

 how the nightingale shakes and trills, and almost 

 loses control of its tumultuous song. All is far 

 different from the buzzing of a motor-'bus in the 

 Strand, or the yelping clamour of brokers in the 

 Stock Exchange. 



From the top of a little hill, where we rest and 

 unpack a little food from our rucksacks, we have such 

 a landscape as no painter will ever feign. The far 

 blue sky with rolled cloud domes a valley decked 

 with green in a thousand shades and shapes, from the 

 almost black of Scotch pine to the green pyramids of 

 larch, the newly burst beech, feathery birch, and 

 golden domes of oak. The richly grown fields, which 

 showed a week ago a mere seme" of pale cowslips, are 

 now strewn with buttercups that gather, as the view 

 recedes, into an unbroken blaze of gold. Or they 

 are powdered with the red mist of sorrel, through 

 which the first white moons of the marguerites are 

 breaking, or girt with a rising spume of fool's- 

 parsley, by some called " Devil's oatmeal." The 

 whitethroat soars and dives into this high forest of 

 herbaceous growth, singing his tin-whistle imitation 

 of the nightingale, which breaks at the important 

 passages into a frankly discordant noise, more like 

 that of a swearing cat. Orange-tip butterflies amble 

 from flower to flower in the aimless way that contrasts 



