Chapter 24

⁠​​​‌​​​​​‌‌‌​​​​‌‌‌‌‌​​‌​‌​​​​‌‌​​​​‌‌‌​​​‌‌‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌‌​‌‌​​​‌​‌⁠The morning of the confirmation was come. It was mid-May time, bringing with it weather not, perhaps, quite so blooming as that assumed to be natural to the month by the joyous poets of three hundred years ago; but a very tolerable, well-wearing May, that the average rustic would willingly have compounded for in lieu of Mays occasionally fairer, but usually more foul.

Among the larger shrubs and fl