FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



and the hedge is dark. The bloom of the gorse is shut 

 like a book ; but it is there — a few hours of warmth and 

 the covers will fall open. The meadow is bare, but in a 

 little while the heart-shaped celandine leaves will come 

 in their accustomed place. On the pollard willows the 

 long wands are yellow-ruddy in the passing gleam of 

 sunshine, the first colour of spring appears in their bark. 

 The delicious wind rushes among them and they bow 

 and rise ; it touches the top of the dark pine that looks 

 in the sun the same now as in summer ; it lifts and 

 swings the arching trail of bramble ; it dries and 

 crumbles the earth in its fingers ; the hedge-sparrow's 

 feathers are fluttered as he sings on the bush. 



I wonder to myself how they can all get on without 

 me — how they manage, bird and flower, without me to 

 keep the calendar for them. For I noted it so carefully 

 and lovingly, day by day, the seed-leaves on the mounds 

 in the sheltered places that come so early, the pushing 

 up of the young grass, the succulent dandelion, the 

 coltsfoot on the heavy, thick clods, the trodden chickweed 

 despised at the foot of the gate-post, so common and 

 small, and yet so dear to me. Every blade of grass was 

 mine, as though I had planted it separately. They were 

 all my pets, as the roses the lover of his garden tends so 

 faithfully. All the grasses of the meadow were my 

 pets, I loved them all ; and perhaps that was why I 

 never had a ' pet/ never cultivated a flower, never kept 

 a caged bird, or any creature. Why keep pets when 

 every wild free hawk that passed overhead in the air was 

 mine ? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw 

 of his pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of 

 woodland ; it was happiness to see his unchecked life. 

 What more beautiful than the sweep and curve of his 

 going through the azure sky ? These were my pets, and 



