I nodded.
“Then I will have some more, thank you,” and she heaved a sigh of deep contentment.
Perhaps it was as well Abigail didn’t come!
The drive from the station to my cottage seemed to be through one long vista of sweet odours.
Up to Monmouth the Wye is a tidal river, and the water was rushing up, backed by a strong wind, bringing with it, faint but unmistakable, the salt tang of the sea, that seems all the more delicious when it has swept over woods and meadows and ploughed fields.
As we left the river bank and started the long uphill climb, the scent of the newly-turned earth became more and more insistent as one passed stray farms and cottages, where the most was being made of the little bright sunshine.
Although it was only the end of February, the brave bit of sunshine had stirred in the larches thoughts of coming spring, and already there was a suspicion of the resinous odour that is one of their many delightful characteristics.
But it would be impossible to name even a fraction of the perfumes that were floating about that day: everything in Nature had responded to the welcome sun-warmth; and incense was rising from myriads of leaf-buds, closely sheathed as yet; from uncountable armies of grass blades; from flowering moss, and uncurling ferns, and bursting acorns; from the hundreds of thousands of catkins swinging on the hazels; from primroses pushing up pink stems and yellow blossoms in sheltered corners, where they had been protected by drifts of dead leaves. And probably the leaves of the wild hyacinths, now an inch or so above ground, had brought up some of the sweet earth-scents from below; likewise the blue-green leaves of the daffodils just poking through the soil, and the snowdrop spears, whose white flowers were nodding in big patches in orchards and front gardens. And it is certain that some early violets were hiding under their leaves.