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Some of the worst are often filled up with a couple of large faggots in the harvest season. These tracks run by the side of the hedge, and the ditches are crossed by bridges or "drocks." The last gate opens into a small field surrounded with a high thick hawthorn hedge, itself a thing of beauty in May and June, first with the May blossom and afterwards with the delicate-tinted dog or wild roses.

I saw three in the weedy plot to the right of the garden-path, where once the hawthorn and lilac tree had grown from well-rollered grass, and in the little bush-wilderness to the left, which was always a wilderness, one more: and in the breakfast-room, to the right of the hall, three; and in the new wooden clinker-built attachment opening upon the breakfast-room, two, half under the billiard-table; and in her room overlooking the porch on the first floor, the long thin form of my mother on her bed, with crushed-in left temple, and at the foot of the bed, face-downward on the floor, black-haired Ada in a night-dress.

Outside the garden, along the lanes, all the hedges overflowed with the great lush of June; nettles and young ivy, buttercups, cow-parsley in profusion, and in the hedge itself the white blossom of the hawthorn.

But this is the old home, one of the landmarks." Opposite was a rather pretty place, a rambling brick house with sharp, pointed roofs, and a long stretch of evergreens. It was beautiful in this soft atmosphere. The birds made a swift dazzle now and then, and filled the air with melody. "Up here is a hedge of hawthorn that was brought over from England by a Yorkshireman living up above.

We argue fiercely about happiness. One insists that she is found in the cottage which the hawthorn shades. Another that she is a lady of fashion, and treads on cloth of gold. Wisdom, listening to both, shakes a white head, and considers that "a good deal may be said on both sides." There is a wise saying to the effect that "a man can eat no more than he can hold."

Resting on the rail under the hawthorn for a minute or two in early spring, when it was too chilly to stay long, I watched a flock of rooks and jackdaws soaring in the sky.

The girls and the father were strong-limbed, thick-blooded people, true English, as holly-trees and hawthorn are English. Their culture was grafted on to them, as one might perhaps graft a common pink rose on to a thornstem. It flowered oddly enough, but it did not alter their blood. And Egbert was a born rose. The age-long breeding had left him with a delightful spontaneous passion.

Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning nothing but a little gray worm: let the poet or the lover of poetry visit it at evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn and the crescent moon it has built itself a palace of emerald light.

My aunt did not go to see the pink hawthorn in the hedge, but at all hours of the day I would ask the rest of my family whether she was not going to go, whether she used not, at one time, to go often to Tansonville, trying to make them speak of Mile. Swann's parents and grandparents, who appeared to me to be as great and glorious as gods.

"'Tis as much impossible, Unless we sweep them from the doors with cannons, To scatter 'em, as 'tis to make 'em sleep On May Day morning." Accordingly, flowers were much in demand, many being named from the month itself, as the hawthorn, known in many places as May-bloom and May-tree, whereas the lily of the valley is nicknamed May-lily.