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§ 18

Spring came at last to the land. The snow melted from the fields, leaving them brown with sodden grass. The ice went from the ponds and brooks, and the frost-bound roads dissolved into soil-smelling courses of mud, in which the farm-carts stuck and the horses went spattered to the croup. Then the first green fell like a veil over the snow-browned meadows, and hung like a strowing of gems on the hedgerow twigs. The heavy smell of soil lifted into something sweeter, as the primroses starred the ditches, and the tinkling April rains washed away the last of winter's cold hard scum and brown sterility. The days grew long, the evenings were green and rainy, with a watery light creeping from the sunset over the fields; the songs of birds, of nesting thrush and linnet, blackbird, starling and ring-dove, flowed out into the first and last light of the day.

This change and renewal was confined to the earth. The poor folk working on the farms of the Surrey borders reaped but a slender profit from the spring. The harvest was still five months ahead, and the price of bread crept slowly up towards it. There was also a sinister increase in the price of potatoes. It appeared that in a far-off savage country called Ireland there had been a potato famine last year, and in consequence the potatoes of Surrey and Sussex had not been left to nourish the inhabitants, but had been sent away to London and Brighton and other fine towns. By the end of February there was not a potato to be had in Copthorne. Susan could no longer cook her dish of Taters and Shakeover, but instead they must be content with flour dumplings and sometimes a little of the pigs' barley wash at Pickdick which her father was able to bring home.