“They’ll be of very little use this year.”  And she wondered if the currant and gooseberry-bushes had escaped; the apples had, for they were later, unless there was another frost.  “And then my nets will be of no use at all; and, I have worked so hard at them!”

The lilac-bushes were not yet in leaf—­only some tiny green shoots.  “We shall not have any lilac this year till the middle of May.  Was there ever such a season?” Larks were everywhere, ascending in short flights, trilling as they ascended; and Evelyn listened to their singing, thinking it most curious—­quaint cadenzas in which a note was wanting, like in the bagpipes, a sort of aerial bagpipes.  But on a bare bough a thrush sang, breaking out presently into a little tune of five notes.  “Quite a little tune; one would think the bird had been taught it.”  She waited for him to sing it again, but, as if not wishing to waste his song, being a careful bird, he continued a sort of recitative; then, thinking his listener had waited long enough for his little aria, he broke out again.  “There it is, five notes—­a distinct little tune.”  Why should he sing and no other thrush sing it?  There was a robin; but he sang the same little roundelay all the year....  A little, pale-brown bird, fluttering among the bushes, interested her; but it was some time before she could catch fair sight of it.  “A dear little wren!” she said.  “It must have its nest about here.”  She sought it, knowing its beautifully woven house, with one hole, through which the bird passes to feed a numerous progeny, and expected to find it amid the tangle of traveller’s-joy which covered an old wall.

In the convent garden there was a beautiful ash-tree, under which Evelyn had often sat with the nuns during recreation, but it showed no signs of coming into leaf; and the poplars rose up against the bright sky, like enormous brooms.  The hawthorns had resisted the frost better than the sycamores.  One pitied the sycamore and the chestnut-trees most of all; and, fearing they would bear no leaves that year, Evelyn stood with a black and shrivelled leaf in her hand.  “Autumn, before the spring has begun,” she said.  “But here is Jack.”  And she stooped to pick up the great yellow tom-cat, whom she remembered as a kindly, affectionate animal; but now he ran away from her, turning to snarl at her.  “What can have happened to our dear Jack?” she asked herself.  And Miss Dingle, who had been watching her from a little distance, cried out: 

“You’ll not succeed in catching him; he has been very wicked lately, and is quite changed.  The devil must have got into him, in spite of the blue ribbon I tied round his neck.”

“How are you, Miss Dingle?”

Miss Dingle evinced a considerable shyness, and muttered under her breath that she was very well.  She hoped Evelyn was the same; and ran away a little distance, then stopped and looked back, her curiosity getting the better of her.  “Ordinary conversation does not suit her,” Evelyn said to herself.  And, when they were within speaking distance again, Evelyn asked her what had become of the blue ribbon she had tied round the cat’s neck to save him from the devil.