THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
away with him. But now, even though I may not 
esteem him more, I am bound to confess to something 
very like a sneaking affection for that small, smart, 
rowdy personality of his. “ Though a poet ”—and a 
distinctly minor one at that—“he is gay.” He is 
always gay, even when sentimentalising in song as like 
the thrush’s as his husky little throat can compass. He 
is something of an idealist too, the man in the street, as 
it were, who supposes he has an ingrained passion for 
the fine arts ; and his admiration of the thrush, who will 
have none of his company, is sincerity itself. So I have 
come to look with amused liking upon his clumsy 
minauderies , and to make allowances for his detestably 
bad manners, the more especially at such moments as 
when, sauntering between bare orchard trees in the 
murky glow of a dim red winter sunset, one is suddenly 
aware of having trespassed upon the blithest company 
in the world. There is such a clicking of castanets, 
such a ploy of light-hearted, stammering gossip, such 
liquid, sibilant calls and cries that you might well think 
to have stumbled upon another Goblin Market. The 
starling is certainly a scandal-monger, and probably a 
knave, but he is a merry soul and the cheeriest of com¬ 
pany. 
The hoar frost and the snow have been weaving their 
white magic over the garden, a wonder that never stales, 
but would seem to hang out fresh signals to the sense at 
every visitation. When you awake in the clear shining 
of the sun to discovery of the night’s enchanted work, 
wrought with such swiftness, in such silence, it is as 
though you walked in a new world, in some strange 
