CHAPTER VI 



A BACKWARD SPRING 



I CANNOT recollect so backward a spring as the 

 present i^ everything in the gardens and the fields 

 is a full month, and in some parts quite six weeks 

 later than the usual time. It is now the first 

 week in April, and instead of being able to say 

 with Gonzalo, as we can in ordinary years — 



" How lush and lusty the grass looks ! How green ! " 



we see nothing of colour in the fields but a dull, 

 uniform, dirty yellow. This has come not only 

 or chiefly from the bitter weather of December 

 and January, but still more from the second 

 winter of March. The few bright days that we 

 had in February caused some plants to start into 

 growth, but the nights were too cold to allow of 

 much growth, and then came the fearful blizzard 

 week, followed by much cold all through the 

 month of March ; and that second winter seems 

 to have been more disastrous to the gardens than 

 _all the bitter weather of December and January. 

 And so it has come to pass that the fields are 

 bare ; there were very few primroses for Easter, 



' Written in 189 1. 

 46 



