The flowers of late April took up a position
unseen, and looked as if they had been blooming a long while,
though there had been no trace of them the day before yesterday;
birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door people said they had
heard the nightingale, to which out-door people replied
contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.
The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London
surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice
as he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have
been necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One
day, book in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees
were mainly oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was
everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of
vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who
are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at
the contrast. He heard in the distance a curious sound, something
like the quack of a duck, which, though it was common enough here
about this time, was not common to him.
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