TWO:It was many years since Keeling had given any notice at all to such unmarketable objects as chestnut-buds or building birds. Spring had a certain significance, of course, in the catering department, for early vegetables made their appearance, and{230} soon there would arrive the demand for plovers eggs: spring, in fact, was a phenomenon that stirred in his pocket rather than his heart. But this year it was full of hints to him, of delicate sensations too fugitive to be called emotions, of sudden little thrills of vague longings and unformulated desires. A surreptitious half-sheet lurked in the blotting-paper on his library table on which he scrawled the date of some new flowers epiphany, or the fact that a thrush was building in the heart of a syringa outside the window. It was characteristic of his business habits to tabulate those things: it was characteristic also that he should thrust the catalogue deep into the leaves of his blotting-paper, as if it held some guilty secret.Keeling had one moment of sheer surprise: he had been perfectly sure of being elected. Then without any conscious feeling of rancour or disappointment, his mind passed direct to what he had already determined to do if this contingency, which since the opening of the hospital-wing he had thought impossible, actually occurred.
