eir collars' moist
embrace; they reach their hands back of them to pull their clinging
winter underwear away. They fan themselves with joggerfies, and puff
out: "Phew!" and look pleadingly at the shut windows. One boy, bolder
than his fellows, moans with a suffering lament: "Miss Daniels, cain't
we have the windows open? It's awful hot!" Frightful dangers lurk in
draughts. Fresh air will kill folks. So, not until the afternoon is the
prayer answered. Then the outer world, so long excluded, enters once
more the school-room life. The mellifluous crowing of distant roosters,
the rhythmic creaking of a thirsty pump, the rumble of a loaded wagon,
the clinking of hammers at the blacksmith shop, the whistle of No. 3
away below town, all blend together in the soft spring air into one
lulling harmony.

Winter's alert activity is gone. Who cares for grades and standings now?
The girls, that always are so smart, gape lazily, and stare at vacancy
wishing.... They don't know what they wish, but if He had a lot of
money, why, then they could help the poor, and all like that, and have a
new dress every day.

James Sackett--his real name is Jim Bag, but teacher calls him James
Sackett--has his face set toward: "A farmer sold 16 2-3 bu. wheat for
66 7-8 c. per bu.; 19 2-9 bu. oats for," etc., etc., but his soul is
far away in Cummins's woods, where there is a robbers' cave that he, and
Chuck Higgins, and Bunt Rogers, and Turkey-egg McLaughlin are going
to dig Saturday afternoons when the chores are done. They are going
to--Here Miss Daniels should slip up behind him and snap his ear, but
she, too, is far away in spirit. Her beau is coming after supper to take
her buggy-riding. She wonders.... She wonders.... Will she have to teach
again next fall? She wonders....

Wait. Wait but a moment. A subtle change is coming.

The rim of the revolving year has a brighter and a darker half, a joyous
and a somber half, Autumnal splendors cannot cheer the melancholy that
we feel when summer goes from us, but when summer comes again the heart
leaps up in glee to meet it. Wait but a moment now. Wait.

The distant woodland swims in an amethystine haze. A long and fluting
note, honey-sweet as it were blown upon a bottle, comes to us from far.
It is the turtle-dove. The blood beats in our ears. Arise, my love, my
fair one, and come away.

So gentle it can scarce be felt, a waft of air blows over us, the first
sweet breath of summer. A veil of faint