said Jonathan.

II

Sap-Time

It was a little tree-toad that began it. In a careless moment he had come
down to the bench that connects the big maple tree with the old locust
stump, and when I went out at dusk to wait for Jonathan, there he sat, in
plain sight. A few experimental pokes sent him back to the tree, and I
studied him there, marveling at the way he assimilated with its bark. As
Jonathan came across the grass I called softly, and pointed to the tree.

"Well?" he said.

"Don't you see?"

"No. What?"

"Look--I thought you had eyes!"

"Oh, what a little beauty!"

"And isn't his back just like bark and lichens! And what are those things
in the tree beside him?"

"Plugs, I suppose."

"Plugs?"

"Yes. After tapping. Uncle Ben used to tap these trees, I believe."

"You mean for sap? Maple syrup?"

"Yes."

"Jonathan! I didn't know these were sugar maples."

"Oh, yes. These on the road."

"The whole row? Why, there are ten or fifteen of them! And you never told
me!"

"I thought you knew."

"Knew! I don't know anything--I should think you'd know that, by this time.
Do you suppose, if I had known, I should have let all these years go
by--oh, dear--think of all the fun we've missed! And syrup!"

"You'd have to come up in February."

"Well, then, I'll _come_ in February. Who's afraid of February?"

"All right. Try it next year."

I did. But not in February. Things happened, as things do, and it was
early April before I got to the farm. But it had been a wintry March, and
the farmers told me that the sap had not been running except for a few
days in a February thaw. Anyway, it was worth trying.

Jonathan could not come with me. He was to join me later. But Hiram found
a bundle of elder spouts in the attic, and with these and an auger we went
out along the snowy, muddy road. The hole was bored--a pair of them--in the
first tree, and the spouts driven in. I knelt, watching--in fact, peering
up the spout-hole to see what might happen. Suddenly a drop, dim with
sawdust, appeared--gathered, hesitated, then ran down gayly and leapt off
the end.

"Look! Hiram! It's running!" I called.

Hiram, boring the next tree, made no response. He evidently expected it to
run. Jonathan would have acted just like that, too, I felt sure. Is it a
masculine quality, I wonder, to be unmoved when the theoretically expected
becomes act