CHAPTER III

_MARCH_

The first signs of spring--Birds sing and call--Life everywhere--Throstle and blackbird--Nature everywhere hard at work--The monastic snails--Their use now--Only used for thrushes' breakfasts--Terror of village folks at the thought that they might be put in "ragouts"--Crocuses--Cloth of Gold--Rizzio--Sir W. Scott--White Daphne--Hellebores--Arabis--Jenny Wren--Legends about the bird--The pet robin's nest in the kettle--Stories and folklore about the robin--Lambs at play--The gentle science of angling--Dame Berners' book--The Abbot's walk--Peter "on ounts"--A talk about rooks and their ways--The carrion crow and his eërie cry--I return late for breakfast--Prince Charming--Talk about the pug-pup--Nana hostile--Bess's suggestions of how and where to keep the pup--A talk with a child about letters--Hours in the garden--Pear tree in sheets of snow--Two hedges of roses--A bed of ranunculi--Burbidge takes me aside--"The boys" are sent to garden in the distance, and I hear about his brother and Sal--How the cure was effected--We go to Wenlock station--Arrival of the pug--Mouse jealous--Mouse appeased--Even Nana is kind to Prince Charming--An hour with Montaigne--A word about the sword flower or Gladiolus--The arrival of the swans--Bess believes them to be fairy princes--We feed them--Bess carried off by Nana--Bess will not walk with me--Bess tells me that Fräulein has met with an accident--A long walk alone over the fields with Mouse, after a bunch of white violets--Favourite flowers--Rapture of the birds--The lark a speck in the sky--Wood-sorrel--St. Patrick's plant--How Bess spent the afternoon--Bess's purchase--The next morning--Nana's indignation--Bess's full confession, and how she paid her debt 93