Passing through the park they came to the high road, and for some way went on side by side in silence. The afternoon was cloudy, but not cold; there had been rain during the previous night, and all about them were the evidences of spring, or rather of the coming of summer. Birds sang upon every bush, most of the trees were clothed in their first green, the ashes, late this year, were bursting their black buds, the bracken was pushing up its curled fronds in the sandy banks of the roadway, already the fallen black-thorn bloom lay in patches like light snow beneath the hedgerows, while here and there pink-tipped hawthorns were breaking into bloom. As she walked the promise and happy spirit of the spring seemed to enter into Emma’s blood, for her pale cheeks took a tinge of colour like that which blushed upon the May-buds, and her eyes grew joyful.
“Is it not beautiful?” she said suddenly to her companion.
“Well, it would be if there were some sunshine,” he replied, in a somewhat matter-of-fact way.
“Oh, the sunshine will come. You must not expect everything in this climate, you know. I am quite content with the spring.”
“Yes,” he answered; “it is very pleasant after the long winter.”
She hesitated a little, and then said, “To me it is more than pleasant. I cannot quite tell you what it is, and if I did you would not understand me.”
“Won’t you try?” he replied, growing interested.
“Well, to me it is a prophecy and a promise; and I think that, although perhaps they do not understand it, that is why almost all old people love the spring. It speaks to them of life, life arising more beautiful out of death; and, perhaps unconsciously, they see in it the type of their own spiritual fortune and learn from it resignation to their fate.”
“Yes, we heard that in the lesson this morning,” said Henry. “‘Thou fool! that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.’”
“Oh, I know that the thought is an old one,” she answered, with some confusion, “and I put what I mean very badly, but somehow these ancient truths always seem new to us when we find them out for ourselves. We hit upon an idea that has been the common property of men for thousands of years, and think that we have made a great discovery. I suppose the fact of it is that there are no new ideas, and you see each of us must work out his own salvation. I do not mean in a spiritual sense only. Nobody else’s thoughts or feelings can help us; they may be as old as the world, but when we feel them or think them, for us they are fresh as the spring. A mother does not love her child less because millions of mothers have loved theirs before.”