gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the
grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn's hedgerows; the same
redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did no
harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony
where everything is known, and _loved_ because it is known?

The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown
foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white
star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my
feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid
broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate
fibres within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these
well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness,
these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality
given to it by the capricious hedgerows,--such things as these are the
mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all
the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our
childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the
deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of
wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the
far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception
into love.



Chapter VI

The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming