The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

May is the finest month of all the year in Glebeshire. 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.