This morning I went out of the back-door, to find a large rabbit sitting and sunning himself at his ease among the snowdrops and violets in the little dell—within a yard of the door.
The weather has been like April to-day, brilliant sunshine and heavy showers. Suddenly the sky behind the cottage was lit up with a rainbow—a glorious span of colour that seemed to be resting on the hill-top. Then it dropped a bit lower at one end, and the big pine trees that stand higher up at the top of the orchard looked most majestic against it. Lower it seemed to drop, and then I distinctly saw the place where it touched the ground. You know they say there is a pot of gold buried at the end of the rainbow—where do you think that rainbow pointed? Why, straight at my fairy dell! So I know there is gold buried under that boulder, and that is why there is always sunshine peeping through the green; first it comes out in the yellow jasmine, then it flares in the daffodils, later you find it in the dancing buttercups and in the lovely honeysuckle, finally it waves to you a bright “Good-bye, Summer,” in the clump of golden-rod that is near the entrance.
VI
Dwellers in the Flower-Patch
February on our hills may be anything—from September round to May. Sometimes it is mild and sunny and sweet with the scent of newly-turned earth; or it may be bitingly cold, and very bleak in the exposed parts, with a shivery-ness even in the valleys. You just take your chance, sure, at least, of fresh air, peace—and the birds.
That is one of the perennial joys of the place; summer or winter you know there will be a host of little fluttering things all ready to welcome you as a friend, if you will but show the least bit of friendliness towards them.
Not that their greeting is entirely cordial when you arrive. The starlings are probably the first to see you; they are arrant busybodies, and seem to spend most of their time retailing gossip from the ridge of the red-tiled roof. No wonder their nests are the lazy make-shifts they are!
A perfect scandal to the bird world, Mrs. Missel-Thrush has told me; it’s a wonder the sanitary authorities don’t insist on their being pulled down and rebuilt! Anything, stuffed in anywhere; a handful of straw in the chimney; dried grass and oddments of rubbish collected in a corner under the tiles; you wouldn’t think any self-respecting egg would consent to be hatched out in such a nest!—certainly no young thrush would put up with so disreputable a nursery. But then, as we all know, the thrushes come of very good family; whereas the starlings!—well—not that one would say a word against one’s neighbours, but since everyone can see and hear it for themselves, the starlings are simply “impossible.”
But the starlings don’t seem to be the least bit worried by the cold shoulder of the more exclusive residents; they gabble and bawl the whole day long, from the top of the roof, while the one who has managed to secure the apex of the weathercock is positively insulting. And the moment we turn into the little white gate, they begin.