Her letters to Netherby and Julia at this time were love-lyrics. From her balcony, Betty saw the spring peep shyly into the court below. The silent snow that had fallen yesterweek, swirling softly, stealthily covering the earth, lying muffling white in deeper and deeper carpet to the foot that trod the courtyard, showing twigs and branches, otherwise scarce suspected, in white array, bowing down the leaves of evergreens--all in a night in solid whiteness fell to the ground, sliding from tree and parapet and ivied wall, and sank into the earth below, vanished beneath the gravel, leaving the damp cobbles shining darkly wet. In the night the rain had swept the snow from the face of the world--the morning laughed with sunlight--vasty white clouds swung across the blue firmament. The fat little concierge sallied out upon the high heap of gravel that had lain all winter in a corner of the courtyard, and with a long shovel in her sinewy arms she flung abroad the pebbles, spreading them wide over the whole space. Swish! she sent them flying against the box-hedge that was the ragged border of the flower-bed along the walls--and swish! they went spirting to the furthest corners. This devilish spreading of gravel satisfies the æsthetic sense of concierges; and a run of the rake keeps it easily tidy. It is like the speech of concierges--gritty and utilitarian. It was more. It was a grim recognition that Spring had tripped in from the country and glanced into the court; it gave the official sanction. And lo! in the beds, almost in a day, bare bushes were straightway sprinkled with emeralds, the desolate laurels and evergreens roused from their drooping and showed a lighter greenness above their sombre steadfast habit; the tall lilacs ventured upon timid unfoldings. A hazel dangled catkins. The ivy on the walls, washed clean, glowed darkly green, hiding in grotesquely bulky nests the consequences of the loves of multitudinous sparrows. The sparrow no longer sat, one of many, a brown huddle on bare branches, a confessed beggar and one of a gang of greedy loafers, shamelessly indigent, but was become almost a rare sight, shooting like clay pellet from a sling across the void of the court and flinging into the green, his egoism lost in family cares, his life no longer the killing of dull time nor recklessly planned for the debauching of the years. On the bare branches of the trees the impatient buds were swelling to the bursting. Along the brown earth showed themselves diffidently the rare wind-flowers. In the warmer corners, amongst much green of leaves, peeped the occasional violet. The briar came into leaf. The branches of most trees and bushes were bare, but in the corner an almond burst into blossom, blushing to greet the rude kisses and boisterous onset of the spring.