ods beyond the Glen. The seaward valleys
were full of fairy mists at dawn.

Vibrant winds came and went with salt foam in their breath. The sea
laughed and flashed and preened and allured, like a beautiful,
coquettish woman. The herring schooled and the fishing village woke to
life. The harbor was alive with white sails making for the channel.
The ships began to sail outward and inward again.

"On a spring day like this," said Anne, "I know exactly what my soul
will feel like on the resurrection morning."

"There are times in spring when I sorter feel that I might have been a
poet if I'd been caught young," remarked Captain Jim. "I catch myself
conning over old lines and verses I heard the schoolmaster reciting
sixty years ago. They don't trouble me at other times. Now I feel as
if I had to get out on the rocks or the fields or the water and spout
them."

Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a load of shells
for her garden, and a little bunch of sweet-grass which he had found in
a ramble over the sand dunes.

"It's getting real scarce along this shore now," he said. "When I was
a boy there was a-plenty of it. But now it's only once in a while
you'll find a plot--and never when you're looking for it. You jest
have to stumble on it--you're walking along on the sand hills, never
thinking of sweet-grass--and all at once the air is full of
sweetness--and there's the grass under your feet. I favor the smell of
sweet-grass. It always makes me think of my mother."

"She was fond of it?" asked Anne.

"Not that I knows on. Dunno's she ever saw any sweet-grass. No, it's
because it has a kind of motherly perfume--not too young, you
understand--something kind of seasoned and wholesome and
dependable--jest like a mother. The schoolmaster's bride always kept
it among her handkerchiefs. You might put that little bunch among
yours, Mistress Blythe. I don't like these boughten scents--but a
whiff of sweet-grass belongs anywhere a lady does."

Anne had not been especially enthusiastic over the idea of surrounding
her flower beds with quahog shells; as a decoration they did not appeal
to her on first thought. But she would not have hurt Captain Jim's
feelings for anything; so she assumed a virtue she did not at first
feel, and thanked him heartily. And when Captain Jim had proudly
encircled every bed with a rim of the big, milk-white shells, Anne
found to her surprise that she liked the effect.