The flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet.

In-door people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.
The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood.

Indeed such practice as he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions.

One day, book in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly oaks.

It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast.