“Oh, do be quiet!” shouted back a rook. “Just look at our nest! It would have been such an up-to-date affair, too; wife built it on the new war-economy lines—clever bird my wife is—only three sticks, you know; saves waste; and _now_ look at it! Wife can’t even find the sticks!” “Serves her right,” cawed a neighbour (a lady, I feel sure). “She shouldn’t have started so early—always trying to get ahead of everyone else with her spring cleaning!” * * * * * The sun had got the better of the clouds, and had changed the whole earth from grey to gold, from dead white to a gleaming brilliance, yellow in the sunlight, blue—undiluted blue—in the shade. I had seen blue snow in pictures, and had hitherto regarded it as an artistic exaggeration. But now I saw the blue with my own eyes on the north side of the walls and barns, and where long shadows were cast by the Wellingtonia, the hollies, and the evergreen firs. The mist still hovered over the valleys, and shut us off from the lower lands, but it was no longer cold and sombre; indeed, it was no longer mist at all; it seemed just light enmeshed, a liquid golden atmosphere. The snow gleamed and scintillated with its diamond-dusted surface; the trunks of the Scots firs surprised one with the sudden warmth of red they showed when struck by the sunbeams, and the lovely colour still left in their blue-green foliage. Far and wide the birds answered the call of the sun. Big pinions flew across the sky, casting shadows on the snow-scape as they passed; small birds darted in and out of holes in tree trunks, or crannies under the eaves; there was a cheeping and a chattering all over the garden and the orchard; while up and down the larches flitted the tits—the blue-tits swinging upside down, almost turning somersaults, as the notion chanced to take them; the coal-tits, any number of them, skipping about from branch to branch, never still a moment, always talking in their brisk little twitter; while over all there rang incessantly the “Pinker, pinker, peter, peter,” of the great-tit. Near at hand, robin, my little garden companion, was having a good deal to say. At first I think he was reiterating what he had often said before: that he considered the dog a nuisance that ought to be banished from any properly conducted garden, since his habit of chasing every moving object within sight was disturbing, to say the least of it, to a conscientious worm-hunter. Having finished on this subject, he began to talk about other things; but try as I would, I could not understand what he said; yet I knew he was trying to tell me _something_. He kept taking short flights over to the wall, and then back to some branch near at hand. “Twitter, twitter,” he kept on saying; yet he never even noticed the path I was clearing, back he would fly to the wall.