FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 143 



if you should see three — goodness ! — something awful 

 might happen." '* 



Or again : 



' Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Luckett's 

 Place, in front of the dairy, was a line of damson and 

 plum-trees standing in a narrow patch bordered by a 

 miniature box-hedge. The thrushes were always search- 

 ing about in this box, which was hardly high enough to 

 hide them, for the snails which they found there. They 

 broke the shells on the stone flags of the garden path 

 adjacent, and were often so intently occupied in the box 

 as to seem to fly up from under the very feet of anyone 

 who passed. 



' Under the damson-tree the first white snowdrops 

 came, and the crocuses, whose yellow petals often 

 appeared over the snow, and presently the daffodils and 

 the beautiful narcissus. There were cowslips and prim- 

 roses, too, which the boys last year had planted upside 

 down, that they might come up variegated. The earliest 

 violet was gathered there, for the corner was enclosed on 

 three sides, and somehow the sunshine fell more genially 

 in that untrimmed spot than in formal gardens where it 

 is courted. Against the house a pear was trained, and 

 opened its white bloom the first of all ; in its shelter the 

 birds built their nests. The chaffinches called cheerfully 

 on the plum-trees, and sang in the early morning. When 

 the apples bloomed, the goldfinches visited the same 

 trees at least once a day. 



* A damask rose opened its single petals, the sweetest- 

 scented of all the roses : there were a few strawberries 

 under the wall of the house ; by-and-by the pears above 

 enlarged, and the damsons were coated with bloom. On the 

 tall plum-trees hung the large purplish-red plums : upon 

 shaking the tree, one or two came down with a thud. The 

 branches of the damsons depended so low, looking, as it 

 were, right into the court, and pressing the fruit against 

 your very face as you entered, that you could not choose 

 * Rotmd about a Great Estate. 



