To give good welcoming to the spring.
In the primrose-time o' the year.
Yes; and it was in the coming spring-time that he was to try for the certificate in forestry; and thereafter—if he were so fortunate as to get that—he might set forth on the path that the Americans had so confidently sketched out for him—the path that was now to lead him to Meenie, as the final crown and prize. 'You may find me a gray-haired woman, Ronald,' she had said, 'but you will find me a single woman.' But still he was young in years; and there was hope and courage in his veins; and what if he were to win to her, after all, before there was a single streak of middle age in the beautiful and abundant brown tresses?
Then, again, on the evening before the morning on which he was to meet her in the Botanic Gardens, he undid the package containing that anthology of verse devoted to Meenie; and began to turn the pieces over, wondering which, or if any of them, would please her, if he took them to her. But this was rather a visionary Meenie he found in these verses; not the real and actual Meenie who had sate beside him on a bench in the West End Park, and placed her hand in his, and pledged her life to him, while the beautiful, tear-filled eyes sought his so bravely. And could he not write something about this actual Meenie; and about Glasgow; and the wonder she had brought into the great, prosaic city? He tried his hand at it, anyway, for a little while:
The dim red fires of yonder gleaming forge
Now dwell triumphant on the brow of night;
A thousand chimneys blackest smoke disgorge,
Repelling from the world the stars' pale light:
A little taper shines adown the street,
From out her casement where she lingers still