Getting Ready 



country-side, all these impressions are in an instant 

 verified ; Nature is really getting ready for summer, 

 and all things animate and inanimate are at work 

 for her. 



A few weeks — nay, a few days ago, as I walked 

 up this same road, everything was still; hardly a 

 human being was to be seen, and the country wore 

 that dull and unvaried look that sunless days in 

 winter always give it. Now there is life and stir 

 all round us. At the inn by the station there is a 

 sale of cattle, and the road is beset with bullocks 

 and pigs, all afflicted with that perverseness which 

 these occasions bring out in them so strikingly, to 

 the detriment of the moral character of their drivers. 

 Prom the other side of the hedge comes a sub- 

 dued chorus of bleating, and now I see that three 

 adventurous lambs, who have passed the age of 

 infancy, have forced their way through a gap, and 

 are trying to see something of the world in a busy 

 high road. No shepherd is near, and I take on 

 myself — and a first delicious taste it is of country 

 life — to drive these children back into their nursery, 

 and to fence up the gap with a stray stick or two 

 out of the hedge. Then, as the road turns sharp 

 and brings me face to face with the village at a 

 half-mile's distance, I see black objects crossing the 

 sky in every direction, but moving always either to 

 or from the elms and sycamores that cluster round 



