aps, a dozen nobs, like very
little buttons, but grooved, and lined, and huddling close, to make room
for one another. And among these buds were gray-green blades, scarce
bigger than a hair almost, yet curving so as if their purpose was to
shield the blossom.

Other of the spur-points, standing on the older wood where the sap was
not so eager, had not burst their tunic yet, but were flayed and flaked
with light, casting off the husk of brown in three-cornered patches, as
I have seen a Scotchman's plaid, or as his legs shows through it. These
buds, at a distance, looked as if the sky had been raining cream upon
them.

Now all this fair delight to the eyes, and good promise to the palate,
was marred and baffled by the wind and cutting of the night-frosts. The
opening cones were struck with brown, in between the button buds, and
on the scapes that shielded them; while the foot part of the cover hung
like rags, peeled back, and quivering. And there the little stalk of
each, which might have been a pear, God willing, had a ring around its
base, and sought a chance to drop and die. The others which had not
opened comb, but only prepared to do it, were a little better off, but
still very brown and unkid, and shrivelling in doubt of health, and
neither peart nor lusty.

Now this I have not told because I know the way to do it, for that I do
not, neither yet have seen a man who did know. It is wonderful how
we look at things, and never think to notice them; and I am as bad as
anybody, unless the thing to be observed is a dog, or a horse, or a
maiden. And the last of those three I look at, somehow, without knowing
that I take notice, and greatly afraid to do it, only I knew afterwards
(when the time of life was in me), not indeed, what the maiden was like,
but how she differed from others.

Yet I have spoken about the spring, and the failure of fair promise,
because I took it to my heart as token of what would come to me in the
budding of my years and hope. And even then, being much possessed, and
full of a foolish melancholy, I felt a sad delight at being doomed to
blight and loneliness; not but that I managed still (when mother
was urgent upon me) to eat my share of victuals, and cuff a man for
laziness, and see that a ploughshare made no leaps, and sleep of a night
without dreaming. And my mother half-believing, in her fondness and
affection, that what the parish said was true about a mad dog having
bitten me, and yet arg