I have heard the song that the Spring-time sings
In my journey over the hills,
The wild reveille of life, that rings
To the broad sky over the hills:
For the banners of Spring to the winds are spread,
Her hosts on the plain overrun,
And the front is led, where the earth gleams red,
And the furze-bush flares to the sun.
I have seen the challenge of Spring-time flung
To the wide world over the hills;
I have marched its resolute ranks among,
In my journey over the hills.
The strong young grass has carried the crest,
And taken the vale by surprise,
As it leapt from rest on the Winter's breast
To its conquest under the skies.
I have heard the secret of Spring-time told
In a whisper over the hills,
That life and love shall arise and hold
Dominion over the hills
Till the Summer, at length, shall awake from sleep,
Warm-cheeked, on the wings of the day,
Where the still streams creep, and the lanes lie deep,
And the green boughs shadow the way.

"Four o'clock!" sang the church bells down the valley, as the poet stooped to cull an early blue-bell.

"Daring little blossom—why, your comrades are still sleeping," he said.

The blue-bell was silent, but all the tiny green leaves laughed, blowing cheekily in the sun.

"Poor, silly poet," they seemed to say, "why not wake up, like the blue-bell, from your land of dreams, and drink the real nectar—live for a day or two in a real, wild, glorious Spring?"

But the poet dreamed on, stringing his conceits heavily together, and with a knitted brow; for, somehow, the feet of the muse lagged tardily this April afternoon.

Then he stumbled over a parasol which lay across the path.

He looked up.

"I beg your pardon," he said, looking into a pair of blue eyes—or were they grey, or hazel? He was not quite sure, but they seemed, at any rate, Hibernian.

"It was quite my fault; I am so sorry."

"Nay, I was dreaming," said the poet.

"And, sure, so was I, too."

"I have not hurt it, I trust."

"Not at all, but it must be quite late."

"It is four o'clock."

"Good gracious, where can the child have got to?"

"You have lost some one?"

"My pupil."

The poet bowed.

"A sorrow that befalls all leaders of disciples," he observed.

Miss Gerald stared, and the poet continued, "The young will only learn when they have fledged their wings and found them weak."

"And then?"

"They come to us older ones for a remedy. Knowledge is associated, madam, with broken wings."

"But I cannot take philosophy home to her mother—she will most certainly require Madge—and can you tell me where this path leads?"

The poet waved his hand.

"Up-stream to the village—down-stream to the mill," he said.

Miss Gerald thought a moment.

"She will have gone down stream," she exclaimed.

The poet meditated.

"I, too, have lost a boy," he said.

Miss Gerald looked surprised.

"The son of a friend," explained the poet.

"I must look for Madge at once," cried Miss Gerald, gathering up her books.

"May we search together—you know the proverb about the heads?"

She laughed.

"If you like," she said, and they followed the stream together.

"You are the poet, are you not?" asked Miss Gerald presently.

"A mere amateur."

"Lady Chantrey has a copy of your works. I have read some of them."

"I trust they gave you pleasure—at any rate amusement."

"A little of both," said Miss Gerald.

"You are very frank."

"Some of them puzzled me a little—and—and I think you belie your writings."

"For instance?"

"You sing of action, and Spring, and achievement—and love. But you live in dreams, and books, and solitude."

"I believe what I write, nevertheless."

Miss Gerald was silent, and in a minute the poet spoke again.

"You think my writings lack the ring of conviction?" he asked.

She laughed.

"They would be stronger if they bore the ring of experience," she said. "Experientia docet, you know, and the poets are supposed to teach us ordinary beings."

"I don't pretend to teach."

"Then you ought to. Is it not the duty of 'us older ones,' as you said just now?—The old leaves living over again in the new, you know," and she smiled. "That's quite poetical, isn't it, even if it is a bit of a platitude?"

"And be laughed at for our pains, even as those hopeful young debutantes are laughing at the dowdy old leaves, on that dead tree yonder."

"I knew you were no true singer of Spring."

Two children wandered back along the path.

"I say, you're not a bad sort," said Tommy.

Madge laughed.

"Hullo, Tommy," cried the poet.

"My dear Madge, where have you been?" cried Miss Gerald.

The poet smiled.

"It is April, Miss Gerald," he said. "We must not be too severe on the young people. As you know, this is proverbially an irresponsible, changeable, witch of a month."

"We must hurry home, Madge," said Miss Gerald, holding out a graceful, though strong, hand to the poet.

He clasped it a moment.

"That was an interesting chat we had, Miss Gerald. I shall remember it. Come, Tommy, it is time that we also returned."

They walked slowly home together, Tommy chattering away freely of the day's adventures. The poet seemed more than usually abstracted. In a pause of Tommy's babbling, the name on the fly leaf of a book came back to him. He had seen it, in the sunshine, by the stream.

"Mollie Gerald," he murmured.

"I beg your pardon," said Tommy, politely.

"Nothing," snapped the poet.

"Which I says to Berrill, 'Berrill,' I says, 'Jest look 'ee 'ere now, if the pote ain't a-walkin' along o' Miss Gerald from the 'all, as close an' hinterested as never was, an' 'im, fer all the world, a 'missusogynist,' I says, meanin' a wimming-'ater.

"An' Berrill 'e said 'imself as 'e'd 'ardly a believed it if 'e 'adn't seed it wi' 'is own heyes, so to speak.

"'It do be a masterpiece,' 'e said, 'a reg'lar masterpiece it be.'"

They were sitting in Mrs. Chundle's kitchen, and Mrs. Berrill seemed excited.

Mrs. Chundle wiped a moist forehead with her apron, and shook her head.

"What with Mister Thomas, an' catapults—I could believe hanythink, Mrs. Berrill," she said.

"The pote's changin' 'is ways, Mrs. Chundle."

"'E is that, Mrs. Berrill, which as me haunt Jane Chundle, as is related to me blood-relations, the Cholmondeleys, 'eard Mrs. Cholmondeley o' Barnardley say to the rector's wife, an' arterwards told me private, 'Yer never do know oo's oo nowadays'—be they poits or hanybody else."

"It bees just what the parson wer a sayin' a fortnight Sunday, wars an' rumours o' wars, an' bloody moons, an' disasters an' catapults, in the last days, 'e says—they be hall signs o' the times, Mrs. Chundle."

Mrs. Chundle sipped her tea, and looked round her immaculate kitchen. Then she lowered her voice,

"I'm 'opin', Mrs. Berrill, I'm 'opin' hearnest as 'ow when Mister Thomas goes back, the master will come to 'imself, like the prodigale."

Mrs. Berrill looked doubtful.

"When once the worm hentereth Eden, Mrs. Chundle," she began, enigmatically—and they both shook their heads.

"The worm bein' Mister Thomas," remarked Mrs. Chundle. "An' 'im that vilent an' himpetuous I never does know what 'e's agoin' hafter next."

"You should be firm, Mrs. Chundle."

"Which I ham, Mrs. Berrill, by nature hand intention, an' if I 'ad me own way I'd spank 'im 'earty twice a week, Mrs. Berrill, Wednesdays an' Saturdays."

"Why Wednesdays an' Saturdays, Mrs. Chundle?"

"Wednesdays ter teach 'im the hemptiness o' riches, Mrs. Berrill, which 'e gets 'is pocket-money on Wednesdays—an' Saturdays to give 'im a chastened spirit fer the Sabbath—an' ter keep 'im from a sittin' sleepy in church, Mrs. Berrill."

Here the door opened suddenly and Tommy came in, very muddy, with a peaceful face, and a large rent in his coat.

"I say, Mrs. Chundle, do sew this up for me—hullo, Mrs. Berrill, that was a ripping tea you gave us last week—you are an absolute gem, Mrs. Chundle," and Tommy sat himself down on the kitchen bench, while Mrs. Chundle ruefully examined the coat.

In Mrs. Berrill's eye was a challenge, as who should say, "Now, Mrs. Chundle, arise and assert your authority, put down a firm foot and say, this shall not be.'"

That lady doubtless saw it, for she pursed her lips and gazed at Tommy with some dignity.

"Mister Thomas," she began—but Tommy interrupted her.

"I say, I didn't know you an' Mrs. Berrill were pals. Mrs. Berrill gave me a huge tea the other day, Mrs. Chundle—awful good cake she makes, don't you, Mrs. Berrill? An', I say, Mrs. Berrill, has old—has Mrs. Chundle told you all about the Cholmondeleys, an' how they married, an' came to England—how long ago was it?" Mrs. Chundle blushed modestly.

"With William the Norming," she said gently.

"An' how she was derived from them, you know, an' all that?"

Mrs. Berrill nodded.

"We hall know as 'ow Mrs. Chundle is a—a very superior person," she said.

Mrs. Chundle stitched away in silent graciousness.

"Tommy," cried a distant voice—it was the poet's—"Tommy, come here, I've just hit the bottle three times running."

Tommy grinned.

"I must go," he said. "I'm jolly glad you and Mrs. Berrill are pals," and he disappeared in the direction of the poet.

"Which I 'ope 'e won't turn out no worse than 'is dear father. God bless 'im," said Mrs. Berrill, as they discussed the tattered jacket.

And so the days tripped by, sunny and showery—true April days. Up in the downs was a new shrill bleating of lambs, and down in the valley rose the young wheat, green and strong and hopeful.

The water-meadows grew each day more velvety and luscious, as the young grass thickened, and between the stems, in the copse, came a shimmer of blue and gold, of blue-bell and primrose.

The stream sang buoyantly down to the mill, and Tommy wandered over the country-side, happy in it all—and indeed almost part of it.

Moreover, Madge and her governess would often come upon him, all unexpectedly, too, in some byway of their daily travel, and he would show them flowers and bird's-nests, and explain for their benefit the position of each farmhand and labourer in the commonwealth of Camslove, and thus the days went by so happily that they seemed to have vanished almost as they came, and on a morning Tommy woke up to the fact that the holidays had ended. A grim showery day it was, too—a day of driving wind and cold rain—and Tommy loitered dismally from arbour to house, and house to arbour.

The poet was busy on a new work, and Mrs. Chundle, too intent on marking and packing his clothes to be good company.

Madge would be indoors, as it was raining, and it was too cold and uninviting for a bathe.

He spent the afternoon trudging about the muddy lanes with the doctor, but the evening found him desolate.

Ah, these sad days that form our characters, as men tell us—characters that, at times, we feel we could willingly dispense with, so that the days might be always sunny, and the horizons clear.

Even the longest of dreary days ends at last, however, and Tommy fell sorrowfully asleep in the summer house, a rain-drop rolling dismally down his freckled nose, and his mind held captive by troubled visions of school.

A day or two after Tommy's departure, the poet stooped, in a side path of his garden, to pick up a stray sheet of paper.

On it he saw two words in his own handwriting.

"Mollie—folly—"

He sighed.

"I remember," he said.

Then he looked again, for in a round, sprawling hand was written yet another word—"jolly."

The poet wiped his glasses and folded up the paper.

Then he coughed.

"I had not thought of that," he observed, meditatively.