Valley. We had been pushing against the
wind, through the red March mud of a ploughed field. Mud is a very good
thing in its place, and if its place is not a ploughed field in March, I
know of no better. But it does not encourage lightness of foot. At an
especially big and burly gust of wind I stopped, turned my back for
respite, and dropped into the lee of Jonathan. Wind is a good thing,
too, in its place, but one does not care to drown in it.

"Jonathan," I gasped, "this isn't spring; it's winter of the most
furious description. Let's reform the calendar and put up signs to warn
the flowers. But I want my spring! I want it now!"

"Well," said Jonathan, "there it is. Look!" And he pointed across the
brush of the near fence line, where a meadow stretched away, brown with
the stubble and matted tangle of last year's grass. Halfway up the
springy slope, in a little fold of the hillside, was a shimmer of
green--vivid, wonderful.

I forgot the wind. "Oh-h! Think of being a cow now and eating that!
Eating spring itself!"

"If you were a cow," said Jonathan, with the usual masculine command of
applicable information, "they wouldn't let you eat it."

"They wouldn't! Why not? Does it make them sick?"

"No; crazy."

"Crazy!"

"Just that. Crazy for grass. They won't touch hay any more, and there
isn't enough grass for them--and there you are!"

"Did you make that up as you went along, Jonathan?"

"Ask any farmer."

But I think I will not ask a farmer. He might say it was not true, and I
like to think it is. I am sorry the cows cannot have their grass, but
glad they have the good taste to refuse hay. I should, if I were a cow.
Not being one, I do not need an actual patch of green nibble to set me
crazy. The smell of the earth after a thaw, a breath of soft air, a
wave of delicious sweetness, in April, in March, in February,--when it
comes in January I harden my heart and try not to notice,--this is
enough to spoil me for the dry fodder of winter. Hay may be good and
wholesome, but I have had my taste of spring grass, and it is enough.
That or nothing. No more hay for me!

What that strange sweetness of the early spring is I have never fully
discovered. The fragrance of flowers is in it,--hepaticas, white
violets, arbutus,--yet it is none of these. It comes before any of the
flowers are even astir, when the arbutus buds are still tight little
green points, when the hepaticas have scarcely pushed open their winter
sh