atcoat then, twisted a muffler
many times about his neck, pulled his cap over his ears, and rushed
for school with a velocity that almost equaled the scudding schooners
whose sails billowed large against the horizon. At least that was what
His Highness, Walter King, invariably did.

But from the instant the breath of spring stole into the air,--ah,
then Lovell's Harbor became a different place altogether. The stems of
the willows fringing the small fresh-water ponds mellowed to bronze
before one's very eyes; the dull reaches of salt grass turned emerald;
the steely tint of the sea softened to azure and glinted golden in the
sun. How shrill sounded the cries of the redwings in the marsh! How
jolly the frogs' twilight chorus!

The miracle went on with amazing rapidity. Soon you were scouring the
hollows in the woods for arbutus or splashing bare-legged into the
bogs for cowslips. You even ventured knee-deep into the sea which
although still chill was no longer frigid. And then, before you knew
it, you were hauling out your fishing tackle and looking over your
flies; inspecting the old dory and calking her seams with a coat of
fresh paint. Then came the raking of the leaves, the uncovering of the
hollyhocks, and the burning of brush; and through the mists of smoke
that rose high in air you could hear the resonant chee-ee of the
blackbirds swinging on the reeds along the margin of the creek.

And afterward, when summer had really made its appearance, what days
of blue and gold followed! Was ever sky so cloudless, grass so vividly
green, or ocean so sparkling? Ah, a boy never lacked amusement now! He
wriggled into his bathing suit directly after breakfast and was off to
the shore to swim, fish, or sail, or do any of the thousand-and-one
alluring things that turned up. And things always did turn up in that
small horseshoe where the boats made in. It was the club of Lovell's
Harbor.

Here all the men of the village congregated daily to smoke, swap
jokes, and heckle those who worked.

"That's no way to mend a net, Eph," one of the spectators would
protest. "Where was you fetched up, man? Tote the durn thing over here
and I'll show you how they do it off the Horn."

Or another member of the audience would call:

"Was you reckonin' you'd have enough paint in that keg to finish your
yawl, Eddie? Never in the world! What are you so scrimpin' of it for?
Slither it on good and thick and let it trickle down into the cracks.
'