ris in one corner, and the primroses
say, "Iris? Not at all. This is our bed. Iris indeed!" And I submit, and
move the iris elsewhere.

And yet this slipping of responsibility is pleasant, too. So long as my
garden will let me dig in it and weed it and pick it, so long as it
entertains my friends for me, so long as it tosses up an occasional rock
so that Jonathan does not lose all interest in it, so long as it plays
prettily with the children and flings gay greetings to every passer-by, I
can find no fault with it.

The joys of stewardship are great and I am well content.

VI

Trout and Arbutus

Every year, toward the end of March, I find Jonathan poking about in my
sewing-box. And, unless I am very absent-minded, I know what he is after.

"No use looking there," I remark; "I keep my silks put away."

"I want red, and as strong as there is."

"I know what you want. Here." and I hand him a spool of red buttonhole
twist.

"Ah! Just right!" And for the rest of the evening his fingers are busy.

Over what? Mending our trout-rods, of course. It is pretty work, calling
for strength and precision of grasp, and as he winds and winds, adjusting
all the little brass leading-rings, or supplying new ones, and staying
points in the bamboo where he suspects weakness, we talk over last year's
trout-pools, and wonder what they will be like this year.

But beyond wonder we do not get, often for weeks after the trout season
is, legislatively, "open." Jonathan is "busy." I am "busy." We know that,
if April passes, there is still May and June, and so, if at the end of
April, or early May, we do at last pick up our rods,--all new-bedight with
red silk windings, and shiny with fresh varnish,--it is not alone the call
of the trout that decides us, but another call which is to me at least
more imperious, because, if we neglect it now, there is no May and June in
which to heed it. It is the call of the arbutus.

Any one with New England traditions knows what this call is. Its appeal is
to something far deeper than the love of a pretty flower. For it is the
flower that, to our fathers and our grandfathers, and to their fathers and
grandfathers, meant spring; and not spring in its prettiness and ease,
appealing to the idler in us, nor spring in its melancholy, appealing
to--shall I say the poet in us? But spring in its blessedness of
opportunity, its joyously