The Imp and the Elf are early on the look-out for another tree-flower that is one of the Spring signs, and that is the flower that people who know nothing about it call "palm." Hundreds of men and women from the towns come out into the country to gather it, and a horrible mess they make of our country lanes and fields. The Elf calls them the "Ginger-beer-bottle-and-paper-bag-people" and hates them with all her small heart. Really, that flower that those people come to gather belongs to the sallow, which is a kind of willow. You know it quite well, with its beautiful straight, tall, bendable stems that look as if they were simply made for bows and arrows. In Spring-time the sallow flowers in pretty little silvery tufts, soft and silky to touch, clinging all along its twigs. The Elf always picks the first bit that she can find that is really out and carries it home in triumph, and puts it in a jampot full of water to remind her that Winter is really over and gone. On the way to the woods we have to pass through broad green fields full of grey sheep with long tangled wool all nibbling at the grass. And very early in the Spring a day comes when by the side of one of the old grey sheep there is something small and white. And the Elf says nothing, but slips her hand into mine, so that I can feel it shaking with excitement. She touches the Imp, so that he sees the white thing, too, and then we all three go across the field as quietly as ever we can to see the little new lamb as near as possible. But little lambs and their grey mothers are very nervous, and long before we are really close to them the grey sheep moves away, and the little white lamb jumps up and scampers after her. Before the Spring is half through nearly all the grey sheep have one or two little white woolly children trotting about with them, and we watch the lambs chasing each other and skipping over tussocks of grass like little wild mountain goats. The Imp and the Elf are always wondering what they think about in those queer little heads of theirs, with the big ears and great round puzzled eyes. But of all the Spring signs the oldest and sweetest and dearest is the cry of the cuckoo that comes when Spring is just going to change into Summer. For hundreds of years English children have listened for the cuckoo in the Spring, and the very oldest English song that was ever written down is all about the cuckoo's cry. "Summer is a coming in, Loudly sing cuckoo. Groweth seed and bloweth mead, And springeth the wood now. Ewe bleateth after lamb, Lowth after calf the cow, Bullock starteth, Buck now verteth, Merry sing cuckoo. Sing cuckoo, Well singeth thou, cuckoo, cuckoo. Nor cease thou ever now."