Three months ago she had been a tree of importance. Her dark, slender branches had formed a fashionable rendez-vous. Each evening she had seen her golden catkins studded with opals—the eyes of soft, furry, blundering moths. Each day the bees had thronged to pay court to her.
Then came Palm Sunday. Her catkins were stripped from her, worn for a few hours in yokels’ hats, and flung aside. The moths came no more; the bees forsook her for the bluebells.
But the kingfishers cared nothing for her appearance. They nested, as usual, deep in the bank below, in a hollow formed by her roots.
The kingfishers were always in a hurry, and their colours were fussy and discordant. They flashed up and down the brook like a pair of demented fireworks. The whole bank reeked with the discarded meals of their progeny.
By the time the nestlings were fledged, the sallow wore its summer mantle, a down-lined cloak of green.
The interesting event had been a diversion. Now there seemed nothing to look forward to.
On the one side lay the meadow-land, stretching in unbroken monotony to the sky-line; on the other, the brook; beyond its wooded bank, more meadow-land.
The brook was not what it had been. Its waters were being drawn away to thirsty London, and herein lay the sallow’s chief vexation.
This year her upper boughs had never flowered. Summer arrived, and she had hoped against hope. They had never even put forth leaves.
To be prematurely bald is disheartening. This baldness was so premature as to be serious. It was the first warning of decay.