Then, as spring breathes life into the sleeping earth, the dead leaves stir, silently, mysteriously, no human ear can detect the rustle, no human eye can see the movement, yet the leaves lift and move apart, disclosing the yellow and green, and silvery-pink of the primrose buds. Still further the dead leaves lift, and the violets look out, and then run all over the place. The wind-flowers push up next, and before you realize what has happened, the place is literally dancing with them. Where did they all come from? Last spring you went through this very wood and saw only a few scattered about at wide distances, where there chanced to be a filter of light through the dense branches overhead. Now the place is an open air ball-room of curtesying sprites. Such are the wonderful ways of the woods! In sheltered spots where the cold winds cannot reach, cushions of wood-sorrel unfurl their pale-green leaves, and then send up, cautiously and shyly, the fragile bells that look as though a breath would blow them away. The woodruff also sets to work, for there must be beauty of odour as well as beauty of colour and form, and something will be needed to take the place of the violets when they go. By this time the bluebells are ready to come out; but there is no shyness about these, sturdy in their growth, no obstacle seems to hinder them; up come the green spears, making their own way through dead leaves and twigs and moss and acorn cup, through thickets of low-lying bramble, through carpets of close-growing ivy; if a dead branch or a tree trunk lies in their way, they peep out at one side, “Is there a trifle of daylight here?” And up they come, carpeting with blue the open spaces between the huge masses of rock that lie pell-mell about the surface; while the humble little ground-ivy lays cool green fingers, and a little later its violet-blue flowers, over the cream and silver of the birches, the soft grey of the beeches, and the rough bark of the oaks, where the felled trunks lie among the up-springing grass, sensing for the last time the coming of spring and summer on the hillside.