XXII

It was the middle of May. Down in the earth the strong heart of
reawakened nature throbbed with a pulsating force that sent new life
forth on its errand of rejuvenation. The apple trees had peeped out with
pink eyes, and seeing the summer maiden stalking through the land, had
thrown off their timid coyness and shaken loose a drapery of white, all
rose-tinted and green-shaded, that turned their broad-acred homes into
fairy ball rooms. And for music the bees, and the birds, and shrill
fife-playing frogs volunteered out of sheer joyousness of life.

Tiny shavings of green wag, the gentle spring grass, lay strewn about
the ballroom floor, and glistened in the warm light that was of one
high-hung chandelier, the sun.

But all the newborn awakening, all the sweet strength of soul and life
that was borne to the waiting land on the wings of soft winds, brought
not the hoped-for allotment to John Porter.

At Ringwood they had waited for the springtime. That would work the cure
the doctor's skill had failed of. A man of outdoors, it was the house
caging that was killing him, keeping him back.

These things were said; but Doctor Rathbone only shook his wise, old
head, with its world of good sense, and answered: "It is none of these
things. The trouble is in his mind; he is fretting. A sensitive man,
well in body, may be brought to illness by anticipated disaster. That
could not have been the case with John Porter well, but John Porter ill
is quite a different matter. It's as I have said before, give him hope,
win him races."

So Allis was really glad at the near approach of the time of her trial.
The day was coming fast, soon, when She was to go forth with her
little band of horses, as a man almost in everything, to strive for the
fulfillment of that which had been put upon her.

The nearness of the not-to-be-shirked responsibility drove into her
veins an unlooked-for exhilaration of strength. She had thought that she
would look with dread upon the going away from Ringwood; that a feeling
much akin to stage fright would quite unnerve her at the very last. The
riding at home, the horse lore, and the almost constant companionship
with her father, always among horses and horsemen, though it appeared
somewhat dreadful to the village folks had been as nothing to her. Now
that she needed strength for the newer, stranger endeavor, it came to
her, even as the blossoms came to the swaying apple trees, great and
small.