Who doesn't know the chilling feel of an English spring, or rather of a day
at the turn of the year before there is any spring? Our gala-day was a
perfect specimen of the order--a white frost succeeded by a bright sun,
with an east wind, warming one side of the face and starving the other. It
was neither a day for fishing, nor hunting, nor coursing, nor anything but
farming. The country, save where there were a few lingering patches of
turnips, was all one dingy drab, with abundant scalds on the undrained
fallows. The grass was more like hemp than anything else. The very rushes
were yellow and sickly.
Long before midday the whole country was in commotion. The same sort of
people commingled that one would expect to see if there was a balloon to go
up, and a man to go down, or be hung at the same place. Fine ladies in all
the colours of the rainbow; and swarthy, beady-eyed dames, with their
stalwart, big-calved, basket-carrying comrades; gentle young people from
behind the counter; Dandy Candy merchants from behind the hedge;
rough-coated dandies with their silver-mounted whips; and Shaggyford
roughs, in their baggy, poacher-like coats, and formidable clubs; carriages
and four, and carriages and pairs; and gigs and dog-carts, and
Whitechapels, and Newport Pagnels, and long carts, and short carts, and
donkey carts, converged from all quarters upon the point of attraction at
Broom Hill.
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