he husbandman, were covered again with wild herbs and plants, like a
fringe to a garment of pure green. Parsley and "gix," and clogweed, and
sauce-alone, whose white flowers smell of garlic if crushed in the
fingers, came up along the hedge; by the gateway from the bare trodden
earth appeared the shepherd's purse; small must be the coin to go in its
seed capsule, and therefore it was so called with grim and truthful
humour, for the shepherd, hard as is his work, facing wind and weather,
carries home but little money.

Yellow charlock shot up faster and shone bright above the corn; the oaks
showered down their green flowers like moss upon the ground; the
tree-pipits sang on the branches and descending to the wheat. The rusty
chain-harrow, lying inside the gate, all tangled together, was concealed
with grasses. Yonder the magpies fluttered over the beans among which
they are always searching in spring; blackbirds, too, are fond of a
beanfield.

Time advanced again, and afar on the slope bright yellow mustard
flowered, a hill of yellow behind the elms. The luxuriant purple of
trifolium, acres of rich colour, glowed in the sunlight. There was a
scent of flowering beans, the vetches were in flower, and the peas which
clung together for support--the stalk of the pea goes through the leaf
as a painter thrusts his thumb through his palette. Under the edge of
the footpath through the wheat a wild pansy blooms.

Standing in the gateway beneath the shelter of the elms as the clouds
come over, it is pleasant to hear the cool refreshing rain come softly
down; the green wheat drinks it as it falls, so that hardly a drop
reaches the ground, and to-morrow it will be as dry as ever.
Wood-pigeons call from the hedges, and blackbirds whistle in the trees;
the sweet delicious rain refreshes them as it does the corn.

Thunder mutters in the distance, and the electric atmosphere rapidly
draws the wheat up higher. A few days' sunshine and the first wheatear
appears. Very likely there are others near, but standing with their hood
of green leaf towards you, and therefore hidden. As the wheat comes into
ear it is garlanded about with hedges in full flower.

It is midsummer, and midsummer, like a bride, is decked in white. On the
high-reaching briars white June roses; white flowers on the lowly
brambles; broad white umbels of elder in the corner, and white cornels
blooming under the elm; honeysuckle hanging creamy white coronals round
the as