the
shrill eagerness of the whippoor-will's call cut the joyous carol
of a dawn-worshipping robin.

CHAPTER X

TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED

In my town, summer, whom the almanack calmly orders out on August
31st, refuses to be evicted in person and lingers serenely while
the furniture is being removed, often until late September. In
these September days I think we love her best, perhaps because we
know that soon we shall lose her, and already the parting has
begun. It is not that certain flowers that came joyously in June
are now but dry bracts and seed pods. She has given us other
beauties and fragrance to take their places. It is rather that
summer herself is gently breaking with us, giving us the full joy
of her warmth through the day, but discreetly withdrawing at
nightfall and lingering late in her own apartments of crisp
mornings when there is a tonic as of frost in the air, whereby
October woos us.

The garnishings of her house are hardly fewer while the moving van
people are so busy, and I am apt to delight in them all up to the
very moment when the sweepers, the autumn winds, come and
brusquely brush them out. Old man Barberry is very happy at this
time too. Since he hung out his queer smelling pale gold pendants
in late May he has shown no touch of color, but has wrapped
himself stoically in sober green and waited, as old men know how
to do. Now his day has come again and he is very brave in rubies
that fringe his dull attire and make him flash fire in the sun
from head to foot. Slender goldenrod girls and blue-eyed aster
children, trooping along the fields and over the hills, holding up
the train of summer as she walks so sedately, think him adorable.
If summer stops but for a moment I see them slipping slyly into
his arms, laying golden heads on his drab waistcoat and gazing
with wonder-blue eyes at his coruscating gems. I think well of old
man Barberry, too; better I fancy than he does of me. I admire his
stocky growth which has a sturdy grace of its own, and I love him
for the birds that he shelters, the yellow warblers that love to
build their cottony nests in his arms. But he was born in the
pasture long before I was and he usually resents my advances. His
trident spines have a sarcastic touch that tingles, and with them
he bids me keep my distance. But he is a wise old man in his love
for gentle beauty and he makes a fine picture of gold and green,
ruby fire and tender blue as he folds al