2 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
and the hedge is dark. The — of the gorse is shut 
like a book ; but it is there—a few hours of warmth and 
the covers vil fall open. The meadow is bare, but ina 
little while the heart-shaped celandine leaves will come 
in their accustomed place. On the pollard willows the 
long wands are yellow-ruddy in the passing gleam of 
sunshine, the first colour of spring appears in their bark. 
‘The delicious wind rushes among them and they bow 
and rise ; it touches the top of the dark pine that looks 
in the sun the same now as in summer; it lifts and 
swings the arching trail of bramble; it dries and. 
crumbles the earth in its fingers; the hedge-sparrow’s 
feathers are fluttered a¢ he sings on the bush. 
' I wonder to myself how they can all get on without 
me—how they manage, bird and flower, without me to 
keep the calendar for them. For I noted it so carefully 
and lovingly, day by day, the seed-leaves on the mounds 
in the sheltered places that come so early, the pushing 
up of the young grass, the succulent dandelion, the 
coltsfoot on the heavy, thick clods, the trodden chickweed 
despised at the foot of the gate-post, so common and 
small, and yet so dear to me. Every blade of grass was 
mine, as though I had planted it separately. They were 
all my pets, as the roses the lover of his garden tends so 
faithfully. All the grasses of the meadow were my 
pets, I loved them all; and perhaps that was why I 
never had a ‘pet,’ never cultivated a flower, never kept 
a caged bird, or any creature. Why keep pets when 
every wild free hawk that passed overhead in the air was 
mine? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw. 
of his pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of 
woodland; it was happiness to see his unchecked life. 
What more beautiful than the sweep and curve of his 
going through the azure sky? These were my pets, and: 
