164 A GARDEN DIARY 
would bend down to kiss her small pink feet. So 
encompassed she would come to meet us along 
the wood paths, a vision of grace and maidenly 
beauty ; the traditional smile on her lips, the 
equally traditional tear in her eye. She would 
look up in our faces with an appealing glance, 
and then begin suddenly to weep, she herself 
knew not why. A maiden with the most maidenly 
of dreams, enclosing a whole enchanted world of 
visionary hopes, fears, delights, anticipations, which 
it would be the dull business of Experience to 
dissipate as the year rolled on. 
But April, as she presents herself before us 
this year, is not that sort of maiden at all. She 
is a remarkably uncompromising sort of young 
woman, with hardly any visible green about her 
costume. She does not care for the colour 
apparently, but prefers drabs, and greys, and 
browns. As for tears she is not nearly as much 
given to them as we could desire. She thinks 
poorly of them evidently, and considers them out 
of date. Her smiles too are doled out in the 
same penurious fashion as her tears. She gives 
us what no doubt she considers our due of both, 
but nothing to spare. Her impulses are all dull, 
decorous, mechanical; as for her feet, far from 
being bare, they are clad in warm winter shoes 
and stockings, which indeed they have every 
reason to be. 
Doubtless I am old-fashioned, but I cannot 
