CHAPTER XxX

AT THE FALCON INN

And then there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold;

And ice mast-high came floating by,
As green as emerald.

O says that wonder-ballad of the sea.

But over London came a gale that made the chim.
neys rock; and after it came ice and snow, sharp, stinging
sleet, and thumping hail, with sickening winds from the
gray west, sour yellow fogs, and plunging rain, till all the
world was weary of the winter and the cold.

But winter could not last forever. March crept onward,
and the streets of London came up out of the slush again
with a glad surprise of cobblestones. The sickly mist no
longer hung along the river ; and sometimes upon a breezy
afternoon it was pleasant and fair, the sun shone warmly
on one’s back, and the rusty sky grew bluer overhead.
The trees in Paris Garden put out buds; the lilac-tips
began to swell; there was a stirring in the roadside grass,

and now and then a questing bird went by upon the wind,
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