oppy blooms and fades. The maid captures the ball of worsted and
restores it.

It lies in the widow's lap. The band plays. The needles click to a long
tune. The healing waters trickle from the ground. The old woman whines
their merits. Flossie sits motionless, her head cocked and her eye upon the
ball. Perhaps the god of puppies will again be good to her.

ROADS OF MORNING

My grandfather's farm lay somewhere this side of the sunset, so near that
its pastures barely missed the splash of color. But from the city it was a
two hours' journey by horse and phaeton. My grandfather drove. I sat next,
my feet swinging clear of the lunchbox. My brother had the outside, a place
denied to me for fear that I might fall across the wheel. When we were
all set, my mother made a last dab at my nose--an unheeded smudge having
escaped my vigilance. Then my grandfather said, "Get up,"--twice, for the
lazy horse chose to regard the first summons as a jest. We start. The great
wheels turn. My brother leans across the guard to view the miracle. We
crunch the gravel. We are alive for excitement. My brother plays we are
a steamboat and toots. I toot in imitation, but higher up as if I were a
younger sort of steamboat. We hold our hands on an imaginary wheel and
steer. We scorn grocery carts and all such harbor craft. We are on a long
cruise. Street lights will guide us sailing home.

Of course there were farms to the south of the city and apples may have
ripened there to as fine a flavor, and to the east, also, doubtless there
were farms. It would be asking too much that the west should have all the
haystacks, cherry trees and cheese houses. If your judgment skimmed upon
the surface, you would even have found the advantage with the south. It was
prettier because more rolling. It was shaggier. The country to the south
tipped up to the hills, so sharply in places that it might have made its
living by collecting nickels for the slide. Indeed, one might think that a
part of the city had come bouncing down the slope, for now it lay resting
at the bottom, sprawled somewhat for its ease. Or it might appear--if your
belief runs on discarded lines--that the whole flat-bottomed earth had been
fouled in its celestial course and now lay aslant upon its beam with its
cargo shifted and spilled about.

The city streets that led to the south, which in those days ended in lanes,
popped out of sight abruptly at the top of the first ridge. And when th