re, making one blink with the dazzle of their odorless beauty: the
frolicsome young wind is shaking out their balm from the hyacinth-bells,
and the sweet Nancies--my flowers--blowing all together, are swaying and
_congeeing_ to the morning airs.

O wise men, who know all things, do you know this? Can you tell it me?
Where does the flower hide her scent? From what full cup of hidden
sweets does one suck it?

It is one of those days when one feels most convinced of being
immortal--when the spirits of men stretch out longing arms toward the
All-Good, the Altogether Beautiful--when souls thirst for God, yearn
most deeply for the well of his unfathomed truth--when, to those who
have lost, their dead come back in most pleasant, gentle guise. As for
me, I have lost nothing and no one as yet. All my treasures are still
about me; I can stretch out live hands, and touch _them_ alive; none of
my dear names are yet to be spoken sparingly with bated breath, as too
holy for common talk. And yet I, too, as I walk and bask, and bend to
smell the hyacinth-blooms, feel that same vague and most unnamed
yearning--a delicate pain that he who has it would barter for no
boisterous joy. The clocks tick out the scented hours, and with loud
singing of happy birds, with pomp of flowers and bees, and freaked
butterflies, God's day treads royally past.

It is afternoon, and the morning wind, heaving with too much fragrance,
has lain down to sleep. A great warm stillness is on the garden and
house. The sweet Nancies no longer bow. They stand straight up, all
a-row, making the whole place honeyed. The school-room is one great
nosegay. Every vase and jug, and cup, and pot and pan and pipkin that we
can command, is crammed with heavy-headed daffodils, with pale-cheeked
primroses, with wine-colored gilly-flowers, every thing that spring has
thrust most plentifully into our eager hands.

The boys have been out fishing.

Algy and Bobby have been humorously trying to drown the Brat.

He looks small and cold in consequence, and his little pert nose is
tinged with a chilly pink. Half an hour ago, mother called me away to a
private conference, exciting thereby a mighty curiosity not unmixed with
envy in my brethren.

Our colloquy is ended now, and I am reentering the school-room.

"Well, what was it? out with it," cries Algy, almost before I am inside
the door again. Algy is sitting more than half--more than three-quarters
out of the window, balancin