She has never had a chance.
We cannot say to her, "Look upon this picture and on this. This
you might have been; this you are." There is no "might have been"
for her, no ideal February. The perfect June we can imagine for
ourselves. Personally I do not mind how hot it be, but there must
be plenty of strawberries. The perfect April--ah, one dare not
think of the perfect April. That can only happen in the next
world. Yet April may always be striving for it, though she never
reach it. But the perfect February--what is it? I know not. Let
us pity February, then, even while we blame her.
For February comes just when we are sick of winter, and therefore
she may not be wintry. Wishing to do her best, she ventures her
spring costume, crocus and primrose and daffodil days; days when
the first faint perfume of mint is blown down the breezes, and
one begins to wonder how the lambs are shaping. Is that the ideal
February? Ah no! For we cannot be deceived. We know that spring
is not here; that March is to come with its frosts and perchance
its snows, a worse March for the milder February, a plunge back
into the winter which poor February tried to flatter us was over.
Such a February is a murderer--an accessory to the murders of
March. She lays the ground-bait for the victims. Out pop the
stupid little flowers, eager to be deceived (one could forgive
the annuals, but the perennials ought to know better by now), and
down comes March, a roaring lion, to gobble them up.
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