The days are warm
but not too hot; the sky is blue but not too blue, the air is soft but
with a touch of sharpness The valleys are pressed down and overflowing
with flowers; the cuckoo cries across the glassy waters of blue harbours,
and the gorse is honey-scented among the rocks.
May-day in Polchester this year was warm and bright, with a persistent
cuckoo somewhere in the Dean's garden, and a very shrill-voiced canary in
Miss Dobell's open window. The citizens of Polchester were suddenly aware
that summer was close upon them. Doors were flung open and the gardens
sinuously watered, summer clothes were dragged from their long confinement
and anxiously overlooked, Mr. Martin, the stationer, hung a row of his
coloured Polchester views along a string across his window, the dark,
covered ways of the market-place quivered and shone with pots of spring
flowers, and old Simon's water-cart made its first trembling and shaking
appearance down the High Street.
All this was well enough and customary enough, but what marked this spring
from any other spring that had ever been was that it was Jubilee Year.
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