284 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



tramper — a countryman at heart, however, he 

 may appear to the metropolitan cabby, who, 

 taking him for a yokel, wishes to charge him 

 accordingly. A backward season is, I am afraid, 

 the nation's loss. To anyone unable to gad 

 about earlier, and who has missed the proper 

 spring effects but is free to range now, it can 

 count as gain. In most years the country-side, 

 though beautiful entirely in summer, falls short 

 in variety of late spring's tone, for as foliage 

 develops towards maturity your view becomes 

 more limited, although, perhaps, greater selection 

 of detail offers. In the leafy month of June you 

 arrive at a stage when you can't see the wood 

 for the trees or the trees for the woods, and 

 individuality of colour and shade is far less 

 marked than earlier. An oak is in ripe summer 

 pretty much an oak, though gradations from 

 olive to apple-green do count. Certainly, then, 

 the faithful painter might catalogue a many 

 shades, according to soil's and weather's tinges, 

 but give me the real spring budding leaf ere 

 rough gale or scorching sun has staled or even 

 adolescent age can wither its infinite variety. 

 When the primroses are nearly over, but not 

 done with by any means, and the cowslips are 

 long in the stalk, the bluebells rich in blue, and 

 the wood anemones having their innings ; when 

 the buttercups gild the meadows with glow, 

 deluding you into thinking the sun shines, while 

 delightful "growing rain" is Scotch-misting you 

 into rheumatism, that is the time. Then the 

 speedwell makes brilliant sapphire patches ; the 

 green money is throwing up its flower stalks ; 

 and the orchids — / call them orchids, bother 

 whether they are orchises or not — are beginning 



