COMMUTER'S WIFE 229 



dread, a black March where frost and tha\v 

 wrestle, and the result is misery and mud. 



March 15. The Ides of March, of tragic memory, 

 have brought me snowdrops, which are the first 

 waking thought of the Garden of Dreams. I did 

 not expect them so soon. I was not searching for 

 them; I was standing in the sunshine by the Mother 

 Tree, looking at the wound made by the cutting of 

 a branch that the great storm had broken, when I 

 spied the snowdrops peeping from under the shelter 

 of the circular seat where Evan had planted them. 



I could not bring myself to pick these, for they 

 seemed to belong to mother, but there were more 

 beside the path and nestled against the grass-bank 

 by the rose arbour, so I gathered some of them and 

 massed them with green moss in a frosted jar, a 

 spring greeting to the dinner table. Father has always 

 held that everything best and brightest of word or 

 thought or face ought to be gathered round this board, 

 considering it a sacred place from which all hurry and 

 trouble and dissension should be banished. 



This afternoon I planted the flower seeds in the 

 hotbed, and the touch of the moist warm earth was 

 like a caress. It seems a very simple thing to do, 

 this planting, but it is not, for the adjustment of 

 depth and pressure to the size of seed requires in- 



