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Updated: May 12, 2025
A dozen times that morning he had repeated it, uttering it in a tone almost of wonder almost of awe. Across several ploughed fields he went, leaving the brook, and, skirting a high hedge to the side of a small wood, he followed the well-trodden path for nearly half-an-hour, when, of a sudden, he emerged from a narrow lane between two hedgerows into a large pasture.
A largesse of dew had been scattered through the hedgerows like loot from the treasure-chests of emperors. Larks were battling up, striving to sing against the very bars of heaven. Every fragrance and sound was a messenger, guaranteeing happiness. Round a bend in the road he came across a cluster of thatched cottages, their white walls gleaming incandescent in the morning sunshine.
As you approach its suburbs from the London Road, it rises clear and wide upon your eye, crowning the elevated table-land upon which it is built; a noble range of prospect on either side, rich with hedgerows not yet sacrificed to the stern demands of modern agriculture venerable woodlands, and the green pastures round many a rural thane's frank, hospitable hall; no one Great House banishing from leagues of landscape the abodes of knight and squire, nor menacing, with "the legitimate influence of property," the votes of rebellious burghers.
Of the things that charm an American observer in the land of parks and castles, I can think of very few that do not come under this definition of private property. When I have mentioned the hedgerows and the churches I have almost exhausted the list. You can enjoy a hedgerow from the public road, and I suppose that even if you are a Dissenter you may enjoy a Norman abbey from the street.
Surely I had seen it? It was a soft and balmy April morning, just at that point of the flowery spring when violets and primroses are lingering under the northern hedgerows, and cowslips and orchises peeping out upon the sunny banks. I have seldom seen anything in woodland scenery more picturesque and attractive than the old coppice of Lanton, on that soft and balmy April morning.
It was but about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm.
At the last few Field Trial meetings the Spaniel Club has provided classes confined to Cockers, which have filled fairly well, and enabled the small breed to demonstrate that it can in its way be quite as useful as its larger cousins. A Cocker can very often go and work as well where a larger Spaniel cannot even creep, and for working really thick hedgerows or gorse has no superior.
A spire showed between the trees, a girl and some children were gathering wild flowers in the hedgerows. How like England! But here was Evelyn! "Did you ever see a more beautiful evening? And aren't you glad that the evening in which I see you again is one would like to call it beatific, only I don't like the word; it reminds me of the convent you have left."
'We have had nine weeks of drought and east wind, scarcely a flower to be seen, no verdure in the meadows, no leaves in the hedgerows; if a poor violet or primrose did make its appearance it was scentless. I have not once heard my aversion the cuckoo... and in this place, so evidently the rendezvous of swallows, that it takes its name from them, not a swallow has yet appeared.
But she had vanished, and a mother of forbidding aspect afforded no explanations. If Platt and Parsons and Mr. Polly live to be a hundred, they will none of them forget that girl as she stood with a pink flush upon her, faintly smiling and yet earnest, parting the branches of the hedgerows and reaching down apple in hand. Which of them was it, had caught her spirit to attend to them?...
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