CICELY'S DAIRY.

HILARY'S TALK.
Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Lucketts' Place, in front of the dairy, was a line of damson and plum trees standing in a narrow patch bordered by a miniature box-hedge.

The thrushes were always searching about in this box, which was hardly high enough to hide them, for the snails which they found there.

They broke the shells on the stone flags of the garden path adjacent, and were often so intently occupied in the box as to seem to fly up from under the very feet of any one who passed.
Under the damson tree the first white snowdrops came, and the crocuses, whose yellow petals often appeared over the snow, and presently the daffodils and the beautiful narcissus.

There were cowslips and primroses, too, which the boys last year had planted upside down that they might come variegated.