Sheaves by E.F. Benson — Read

The spire of Davos Church, so steep in pitch that even in mid-winter no snowflake could cling to it even for the moment's space in which it could lie there and give consolidation to the next flake, was to-day no grayer than its surroundings. For weeks past the annual thaw had set in, and now the village itself and a couple of hundred feet of hillside above it were quite clear of snow. But spring was not behaving, so Hugh thought, as he sat on a pine-bole above the valley, in a Tennysonian manner. When the "last long streak of snow" fades, the "maze of quick" ought to bourgeon. What the "maze of quick" in terms of flower and leaf was he did not accurately know. But he was safe in saying that nothing of any description was bourgeoning. Nothing looked like bourgeoning, unless to bourgeon was to look flat and stale and dead.

Three months had gone since the glorious day when Peggy, Daisy, and he had passed the test for the English rink, and it was now mid-April. He had been down every morning to get a little skating, until a week ago, when the short grass below the last little patch of ice had begun to show through the surface he intended to skate on. But when that happened, it was no longer any use to pretend to Edith that he was going to skate, and should be on the rink the whole morning. For a time that excuse of enjoyable occupation had served, and often he had sat there, since the ice was unskateable, being decaying slush merely, in order to spend a few hours away from the house, in order to make her believe that he was still occupied. But when the ice finally vanished he had to make other reasons for his absence.