overpaid.




THE SCENE-SHIFTER



"We are all going to the play or coming from it."--DICKENS.


In a few hours came "the season's difference." The scene-shifter worked
with almost magical haste, with silence, and with supreme effect. The
gloomy days and nights of misty hill-tops and damp hollows, where the
grass was sodden and the air dull and irresponsive to sound, gave way to
bright sunshine, cloudless skies, calm seas, echoing hills, and the tinge
of that which for lack of the ideal word we call "spring." Spring does
not visit the tropical coast, where vegetation does not tolerate any
period of rest. When plants are not actually romping with excess of vital
force, as during the height of the wet season, they grow with the haste
of summer. And yet immediately on the dispersal of the mists of July the
least observance could not fail to recognise that a certain and elaborate
change had taken place. The mango-trees had been flowering for several
weeks in a trivial, half-hearted way, but when the sun sent its thrills
down into the moist soil the lemons and pomeloes began to sweeten the
air; the sunflower-tree displayed its golden crowns among huge soft
leaves, and the last blooms of belated wattles fell, showing that it is
possible for tributes representative of May and September to be paid on
one and the same date.