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The hedges were covered with a wreath of white May-blossom, and seemed like interminable drifts of that snow in summer which is as good news from a far country; and the roads were bordered by the feathery hemlock, which covered the face of the land as with a bridal veil. "Isn't the world a beautiful place?" said Elisabeth, with a sigh of content, to Alan, who was driving her in his mail-phaeton.
Martin's mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I thought, but with the same dear womanly face over her light print frock, which was as sweet as may-blossom. She held up both hands at sight of me and cried: "There, now! What did I tell you, doctor! Didn't I say they might marry her to fifty lords, but she wouldn't forget her old friends!"
The rider bowed his head as he passed under the rich blazonry of the white May-blossom, which, like creamy lace, covered the Three Thorns of Carlinwark, now deeply stained with rose colour from the clouds of sunset. "Aye, aye," he said, "the Douglas badge is indeed a heart but it is a bleeding heart.
Now there was nothing to illumine their path but such forked flashes as lightning threw them at intervals, touching here a hill with clustered cottages, striking into day there a May-blossom, a patch of weed, a single tree by the wayside. Suddenly a more vivid and continuous quiver of violet fire met its reflection on the landscape, and Farina saw the Rhine-stream beneath him.
James's Park with its banks of daffodils and showers of white may-blossom, its groups of laughing children at play, its parade of black-coated horsemen, with here and there the scarlet flash of a Life-guard as he sped trotting by, and for bass accompaniment to this music of the Joy of Life the continual low thunder which in the Mall the prancing hoofs of countless carriage-horses strummed.
"I never saw it finer than it is this year not in all the years I've lived in Mershire; and Mershire's the land for May-blossom." "It do look pretty," agreed his wife. "I only wish Lucy Ellen was here to see it; she was always a one for the May-blossom.
Still and mute I stood as it drew nearer so still, so mute, that a lazy pike thrust out its wolfish jaws just under my feet and, seeing me, splashed under again in great discomposure; so motionless that a blundering swallow all but darted against me, then swept curving to the water, and vanished down the stream. She had been gathering May-blossom, and held a cluster in one hand.
A bold, freebooting Amazon she appeared, standing there in the fire-glow, and one to whom hardihood was a birth-right. The other woman towered above her and even above Gallito. She was a colossal Venus, with a face pink and white as a may-blossom. Tremulous smiles played about her soft, babyish mouth and a joyous excitement shone in her wide, blue eyes.
In Cambridgeshire, within the present century, the children had a doll dressed as the "May Lady," before which they set a table with wine and food on it; they also begged money and garlands for "the poor May Lady." There are some quaint superstitions connected with May-day and May-blossom. To bathe the face in the dew of a May morning was reckoned an infallible recipe for a good complexion.
Like most dark, sallow women, whose own brief freshness is past, the elder girl passionately admired such may-blossom beauty, as something belonging to a different race from herself. And this was not all: as she continued to look into Ephie's face, she ceased to be herself; she became the man whose tastes she knew better than her own; she saw with his eyes, felt with his senses.
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