E. Nesbit

“ Through its moving green the sun made a golden haze and the shadows of the leaves danced on a pathway that was all green grass and glad little thriving wild weeds.
"Dear God; but it's good to see green woods again," he said.
And it was here, among the woods, that he met her the second time. In the middle of that wood is a carrefour, an open space of bright fine grass, and from it four broad green rides run, straight as arrows, dip and dwindle and grow invisible with distance. The ground is green, the undergrowth is green and the new fronds of bracken and the trees overhead. ”

“ It's difficult to believe that spring really will come again, isn't it? when one sees the brown bare trees and the heaps of dead leaves."
"But all the flowers are there under the leaves," said the aunt; "and spring really will come again."
The aunt was right. Spring did come again. And with its coming came Neville Underwood from the dry East. He sent his luggage up from the station in the dog cart that came to meet him, and he himself walked up through the woods in the splendor of one of those afternoons when May takes the rôle of July and plays the part perfectly. ”

“ The glad dance of the leaves in the green wood paled before the father, full of glad questionings and comments, his trembling hands stirring deep drifts of rustling leaves—notes for the new book, on all sorts of odd scraps of paper—it was good to be at home where one was so loved, so desired. And he told himself that he must have fallen asleep in the wood. Certainly the girl from the Museum could never have fallen asleep there.
Tea was served under the copper-beech.
"Are you expecting any one?" Neville asked, for the cups were four.
"Only Phil—your father's secretary, I mean," said the aunt. ”

“ And pretty, too."
"That doesn't matter so much," said the aunt, "but she's so modest and sweet and—she has a perfect genius for gardening."
"And for our sort of work," the father said. "I don't suppose there's another girl alive with eyes like hers who knows shorthand, and the Egyptian and Assyrian script, and how to be always handy and never in the way."
"I must make her forget the other man, confound him," said Neville, and wondered savagely whether the other man had ever had wild, wonderful visions in woodland places. ”

“ You shall not make me like you."
But he stayed talking with her in the little wood of orange-trees till the aunt had laid away the jingling housekeeping keys and joined them on the terrace. Then she went to her work in the library. He strolled in presently, to talk over the book with his father.
"You won't mind Miss Grantham staying with us?" said the father. "She can take down everything you say in shorthand—and as she'll have the whole transcribing of the book to do——"
"Of course—of course," said Neville. ”