, in perfect silence watching me approach, the violets
and bloodroot blossoms they had been gathering dangling in loose
bunches from their hands. Behind them, just across the brook which
ran, like a road, in front of the gate, stood a weathered-gray cabin,
of rough boards, with a central doorway and windows without sashes.
At one end was an outside chimney of field-stone, laid, it seemed,
with clay. Surrounding this cabin was a rough picket fence, again of
untrimmed boards, with a gate opening on the brook and stepping stones
across to the path. In the little compound thus enclosed, and almost
overtopping the cabin, were half a dozen peach and plum trees,
veritable geyser jets of pink and white bloom. Behind, in a small
clearing, was the stubble of last year's corn. Squalid and poor and
mean enough a dwelling, a shiftless clearing, a dirty family of
children--yes. But under its geyser jets of blossom that little gray
cabin was the essence of the picturesque, with the forest wall rising
behind it, and behind that the great headwall of the cove. It was
weathered and old and primitive and lovely; and the six little shy
ragamuffins on the stone, still staring at me with the eyes of timid
animals, were--well, they were six little shy ragamuffins, and that is
nice enough!

"Hello," said I, "I see you've got the baby out to gather wild
flowers, too."

The eldest girl found speech, after an effort. "That ain't the baby,"
she said, with a show of scorn for my ignorance. "The baby's in the
house with maw."

My respect for the capacity of that little cabin was still further
increased by this revelation. I asked the eldest girl some questions
about the way, finding her directions for spotting a trail in this
forest maze remarkably lucid, and went again on my wanderings, my last
backward glimpse of the mouse-gray cabin under its pink and white
geysers of blossom still showing the six little tow-headed, barefooted
youngsters standing like six little patiences on a pedestal, staring
after me. But when I had disappeared down the trail I heard from far
off, mingling with the murmur of the brook, the shrill sound of
childish glee, as they resumed their search for wild flowers. Then it
was that Spring smiled, and gave my fingers a little squeeze!

So I wandered on, with Spring for company, all that blissful day,
through forests of oak and chestnut where the Judas trees danced, past
dogwood thickets and over beds of violets, into unex