Well, time will tell.
Yes, spring is waning, though hardly yet has summer really come, so backward and cold has the season been.
We have had our last day’s pleasant outing en famille. Mamma went, and even baby Ida, who is old enough to ask questions and make queer remarks.
A clear sky and the brightest of sunshine, though not distressingly hot. We crossed country for Wokingham. The trees very beautiful, though the leaves are already turning more crisp; in spring time, city reader mine, as the wind goes whispering through the trees, it seems as if every leaf were of softest silk; in summer the sound is a soughing or rustling one; but in winter the breeze moans and shrieks among the bare branches, and “blows with boisterous sweep.”
We unlimbered in the market square at Wokingham. The English are a novelty-loving people. This was well shown to-day, for streets and pavements were speedily lined to look at us, and even windows raised, while Modesty herself must needs peep from behind the curtains. In the afternoon a regiment of artillery came into the town, and popular attention was henceforth drawn to them, though our visitors were not few.
On our way home we passed the lodges of Haines Hill, the residence of the well-known T. Garth, Esq, a country squire of the true English type—a man who, although over sixty, almost lives in the saddle, and in the season follows his own hounds five days a week. The narrowness of the avenues and plenitude of the drooping limes forbade a visit to the manor, of which, however, as we went slowly along the road we caught many a glimpse red-glimmering through the green.
Great banks of pink and crimson rhododendrons gave relief to the eye. Looking to the right the country was visible for miles, richly-treed as the whole of Berkshire is, and with many a farmhouse peeping up through clouds of foliage.
The cottages by the roadside at this time of the year are always worth looking at. They vie with each other in the tidiness of their gardens, their porches, and verandahs.
They cultivate roses, all kinds and colours; standards and half-standards and climbers, crimson, white, yellow, pink, and purple. Stocks and wallflowers are also very favourite flowers. Even those cottages that cannot boast of a morsel of garden have the insides of every window all ablaze with flowering geraniums.