fter they had arrived the child's tongue was loosened and she
chattered. She had seen everything there was to be seen at the rector's.
She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice. She had to be
checked and put to bed, lest she be tired out.

"I never knew that child could talk so much," Sarah said to Daniel,
after the little girl had gone up-stairs.

"She talks quite some when she's alone with me."

"And she seems to see everything."

"Ain't much that child don't see," said Daniel, proudly.

The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel never again succumbed.
When autumn came, for the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was
sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and the winter upon his
precious little Dan'l, whom he put before himself as fondly as any
father could have done, and as the season progressed his dread seemed
justified. Poor little Dan'l had cold after cold. Content Adams and Lucy
Rose came to see her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties.
But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel began to look forward
to spring and summer--the seasons which had been his bugaboos through
life--as if they were angels. When the February thaw came, he told
little Dan'l, "Jest look at the snow meltin' and the drops hangin' on
the trees; that is a sign of summer."

Old Daniel watched for the first green light along the fences and the
meadow hollows. When the trees began to cast slightly blurred shadows,
because of budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the terraces,
and now and then the air was cleft with blue wings, he became jubilant.
"Spring is jest about here, and then uncle's little Dan'l will stop
coughin', and run out of doors and pick flowers," he told the child
beside the window.

Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blossoms, leaves, birds,
and flowers--all arrived pellmell, fairly smothering the world with
sweetness and music. In May, about the first of the month, there was an
intensely hot day. It was as hot as midsummer. Old Daniel with
little Dan'l went afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the
carnival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon treebranches, of
birds and butterflies. "Spring is right here!" said old Daniel. "Summer
is right here! Pick them vilets in that holler, little Dan'l." The
old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and watched the child in the
blue-gleaming hollow gather up violets in her little hands as if
they were jewels.