ain what
the music was.

6. And when she saw the bird perched on a yellow-brown bough, she wondered
yet more. It was only a bluebird, but then it was the first bluebird
Margery had ever seen. He fluttered among the prickly twigs, and looked as
if he had grown out of them, as the cedar berries had, which were dusty
blue, the color of his coat. But how did the music get in his throat? And
after it was in his throat, how could it untangle itself, and wind itself
off so evenly? And where had the bluebird flown from, across the snow
banks down to the shore of the blue sea?

7. The waves sang a welcome to him, and he sang a welcome to the waves;
they seemed to know each other well; and the ripple and the warble sounded
so much alike, the bird and the wave must have both learned their music of
the same teacher. And Margery kept on wondering as she stepped between the
song of the bluebird and the echo of the sea, and climbed a sloping bank,
just turning faintly green in the spring sunshine.

8. The grass was surely beginning to grow! There were fresh, juicy shoots
running up among the withered blades of last year, as if in hopes of
bringing them back to life; and closer down she saw the sharp points of
new spears peeping from their sheaths. And scattered here and there were
small, dark green leaves folded around buds shut up so tightly that only
those who had watched them many seasons could tell what flowers were to be
let out of their safe prisons by and by. So no one could blame Margery for
not knowing that they were only common things, nor for stooping over the
tiny buds, and wondering.

9. What made the grass come up so green out of the black earth? And how
did the buds know when it was time to take off their little green hoods,
and see what there was in the world around them? And how came they to be
buds at all? Did they bloom in another world before they sprung up
here?--and did they know, themselves, what kind of flowers they should
blossom into? Had flowers souls, like little girls, that would live in
another world when their forms had faded away in this?

10. Margery thought she would like to sit down on the bank, and wait
beside the buds until they opened; perhaps they would tell her their
secret if the very first thing they saw was her eyes watching them. One
bud was beginning to unfold; it was streaked with yellow in little stripes
that she could imagine became wider every minute. But she would not touch
it, fo