me, I think: the mother
must have found the child again in heaven a very long time ago: but in
the winter I shall wonder if the snow has covered it well, and next year
I shall go to see the sweet-brier bush when it is in bloom. God knows
what use that life was, the grave is such a short one, and nobody knows
whose little child it was; but perhaps a thousand people in the world
to-day are better because it brought a little love into the world that
was not there before.

I sat so long here in the sun that the dog, after running after all the
birds, and even chasing crickets, and going through a great piece of
affectation in barking before an empty woodchuck's hole to kill time,
came to sit patiently in front of me, as if he wished to ask when I
would go on. I had never been in this part of the pasture before. It was
at one side of the way I usually took, so presently I went on to find a
favorite track of mine, half a mile to the right, along the bank of a
brook. There had been heavy rains the week before, and I found more
water than usual running, and the brook was apparently in a great hurry.
It was very quiet along the shore of it; the frogs had long ago gone
into winter-quarters, and there was not one to splash into the water
when he saw me coming. I did not see a musk-rat either, though I knew
where their holes were by the piles of fresh-water mussel shells that
they had untidily thrown out at their front door. I thought it might be
well to hunt for mussels myself, and crack them in search of pearls, but
it was too serene and beautiful a day. I was not willing to disturb the
comfort of even a shell-fish. It was one of the days when one does not
think of being tired: the scent of the dry everlasting flowers, and the
freshness of the wind, and the cawing of the crows, all come to me as I
think of it, and I remember that I went a long way before I began to
think of going home again. I knew I could not be far from a cross-road,
and when I climbed a low hill I saw a house which I was glad to make the
end of my walk--for a time, at any rate. It was some time since I had
seen the old woman who lived there, and I liked her dearly, and was sure
of a welcome. I went down through the pasture lane, and just then I saw
my father drive away up the road, just too far for me to make him hear
when I called. That seemed too bad at first, until I remembered that he
would come back again over the same road after a while, and in the mean