blue-bells. High up, the pines sighed along the ridge, turning paler;
and far down, where the brook ran, a mad duet was going on between
thrush and chaffinch--"_Cheer up, cheer up, Queen!" "Clip clip, clip,
and kiss me--Sweet_!"--one against the other.

Now, the behaviour of the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages
changed as he descended the valley. At first he went from side to
side, because the loose stones were sharp and lay unevenly; soon he
zig-zagged for another purpose--to peer into the bank for violets, to
find a gap between the trees where, by bending down with a hand
on each knee and his head tilted back, he could see the primroses
stretching in broad sheets to the very edge of the pine-woods. By
frequent tilting his collar broke from its stud and his silk hat
settled far back on his neck. Next he unbuttoned his waistcoat and
loosened his braces; but no, he could not skip--his boots were too
tight. He looked at each tree as he passed. "If I could only see"--he
muttered. "I'll swear there used to be one on the right, just here."

But he could not find it here--perhaps his memory misgave him--and
presently turned with decision, climbed the low fence on his left,
between him and the hollow of the coombe, and dropped into the
plantation on the other side. Here the ground was white in patches
with anemones; and as his feet crushed them, descending, the babel of
the birds grew louder and louder.

He issued on a small clearing by the edge of the brook, where the
grass was a delicate green, each blade pushing up straight as a
spear-point from the crumbled earth. Here were more anemones, between
patches of last year's bracken, and on the further slope a mass of
daffodils. He pulled out a pocket-knife that had sharpened some