Brake-fern rises five feet high; in some way woodpeckers are
associated with brake, and there seem more of them where it
flourishes. If you count the depth and strength of its roots in
the loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened stem, and the
width of its branching fronds, you may say that it comes near to be
a little tree. Beneath where the ponds are bushy mare's-tails
grow, and on the moist banks jointed pewterwort; some of the broad
bronze leaves of water-weeds seem to try and conquer the pond and
cover it so firmly that a wagtail may run on them. A white
butterfly follows along the waggon-road, the pheasants slip away as
quietly as the butterfly flies, but a jay screeches loudly and
flutters in high rage to see us. Under an ancient garden wall
among matted bines of trumpet convolvulus, there is a hedge-
sparrow's nest overhung with ivy on which even now the last black
berries cling.

There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall, out of
reach, and lichen grows against it dried by the sun till it looks
ready to crumble. By the gateway grows a thick bunch of meadow
geranium, soon to flower; over the gate is the dusty highway road,
quiet but dusty, dotted with the innumerable foot-marks of a flock
of sheep that has passed. The sound of their bleating still comes
back, and the bees driven up by their feet have hardly had time to
settle again on the white clover beginning to flower on the short
roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and briar and bramble, the
honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the dust that has been scattered
upon it. But see - can it be? Stretch a hand high, quick, and
reach it down; the first, the sweetest, the dearest rose of June.
Not yet expected, for the time is between the may and the roses,
least of all here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found -