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Rachel smiled sadly on the snow-drops at her feet, and shook her head a little. 'No, I must stay at home this evening I mean I have not spirits to go to Brandon. Thank Dorcas very much from me that is, if you really mean that she asked me. 'I am so sorry I am so disappointed, said Lord Chelford, looking gravely and enquiringly at her. He began, I think, to fancy some estrangement there.
At the door a young girl faced me she was the only daughter of a great Neapolitan house. Dressed in pure white, as all such maidens are, with a crown of snow-drops on her dusky hair, and her dimpled face lighted with laughter, she looked the very embodiment of early spring. She addressed me somewhat timidly, yet with all a child's frankness. "Is not this delightful?
Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies.
"Ah! and some one has told you so." She blushed and laughed a little consciously. "Yes; the great Prince de Majano. And he is too noble to say what is not true, so I MUST be 'la piu bella donzella, as he said, must I not?" I touched the snow-drops that she wore in a white cluster at her breast. "Look at your flowers, child," I said, earnestly. "See how they begin to droop in this heated air.
The ornamented chimneys, round or square, less adorned than those which, like little turrets, crest the houses of the Portuguese peasantry; and yet not less happily suited to their place, the hedge of clipt box beneath the windows, the rose-bushes beside the door, the little patch of flower-ground, with its tall hollyhocks in front; the garden beside, the bee-hives, and the orchard with its bank of daffodils and snow-drops, the earliest and the profusest in these parts, indicate in the owners some portion of ease and leisure, some regard to neatness and comfort, some sense of natural, and innocent, and healthful enjoyment.
The newness and the freshness of spring were in the air, snow that had fallen three days ago was nearly gone, just a trace of it lay on the black earth of the flower beds; white crocuses, blue crocuses, snow-drops, those first trumpeters of spring, blew valiantly in the little garden, the air was sharp and clear, and the sky above blue and sparkling.
But on the grass under the spreading oaks which sheltered the eastern front a few snow-drops were out. And Diana was gathering them. She came toward her visitors with alacrity. "Oh! what a long time since you have been to see me!" Mrs. Roughsedge explained that she had been entertaining some relations, and Hugh had been in London. She hoped that Miss Mallory had enjoyed her stay at Tallyn.
There were not many ways of telling when spring came to the Cabbage Patch; no trees shook forth their glad little leaves of welcome, no anemones and snow-drops brought the gentle message, even the birds that winged their way from the South-land hurried by, without so much as a chirp of greeting.
"I? I am a little over seventy." "And I am fifty-six, and yet you think old age is weighing me down, while a wreath of snow-drops is overhanging your brow." "Yes, that is true," said Blucher, in confusion. "I had really forgotten my age." "The reason is, that your heart is still young and fresh," exclaimed Scharnhorst, looking at him tenderly, and laying his hand on Blucher's broad shoulder.
There seemed no end to the little up-and-down paths and alleys, leading to rustic seats and quaint arbours; no limits to the little pine-wood, down into which led the dearest little zig-zaggy path you ever saw, all bordered with snow-drops and primroses and violets, and later on with periwinkles, and wood anemones, and those bright, starry, white flowers, whose name no two people agree about.
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