I can't have some of you half a mile behind." The April days were still cold, but very bracing for exercise.

Lambs were out in the fields, primroses grew in clumps under the hedgerows, hazel catkins flung showers of pollen to the winds, and in the coppice that bordered the road pale-mauve March violets and white anemone stars showed through last year's carpet of dead leaves.

There was that joyful thrill of spring in the air, that resurrection of Nature when the thraldom of winter is over, and beauty comes back to the gray dim world.
The old Greeks felt it, thousands of years ago, and fabled it in their myth of Persephone and her return from Hades.

The Druids knew it in Ancient Britain, and fixed their religious ceremonies for May Day.

The birds were caroling it still in the hedgerows, and the girls caught the joyous infection and danced along in defiance of Miss Strong's jog-trot guide walk.