walk; about the blackthorn that would suddenly make a white glory of the
woods; about the green, sticky budding of the larches, and the keen sweet
smell of them, and the damp fragrance of the roaming wind that would blow
over river-flooded fields, smelling of bonfires and wet earth. He took
him through the seasons, telling him of the blown golden armies of the
daffodils that marched out for Easter, and the fragrant white glory of
the may; and the pale pink stars of the hedge-roses, and the yellow joy
of buttercup fields wherein cows stand knee-deep and munch, in order to
give Thomas sweet white milk.

"Ugh," said Thomas, making a face, and Peter answered, "Yes, I know;
sometimes they come upon an onion-flower and eat that, and that's not
nice, of course. But mostly it's grass and buttercups and clover." Then
he told him of hot July roads, where the soft white dust lies, while the
horses and the cows stand up to their middles in cool streams beneath the
willows and switch their tails, and the earth dreams through the year's
hot noon; and of August, the world's welfare and the earth's warming-pan,
and how, in the fayre rivers, swimming is a sweet exercise. "And my
birthday comes then. Oh, 'tis the merry time, wherein honest neighbours
make good cheer, and God is glorified in his blessings on the earth.
Then cometh September, Thomas"--Peter was half talking, half reading out
of a book he had got to amuse Thomas--"then cometh September, and then he
(that's you, Thomas) doth freshly beginne to garnish his house and make
provision of needfull things for to live in winter, which draweth very
nere.... There are a few nice things in September; ripe plums and pears
and nuts--(no, nuts aren't nice, because our teeth aren't good, are they;
at least mine aren't, and you've only got one and a half); but anyhow,
plums, and a certain amount of yellow sunshine, and Thomas's birthday.
But on the whole it's too near the end of things; and in briefe, I thus
conclude of it, I hold it the Winter's forewarning and the Summer's