m,
seeing that they worked.

The next day began overcast, but Providence was merely preparing for me a
special little gift in the form of a miniature snowstorm. It was quite
real while it lasted. It whitened the grass and the road, it piled itself
softly among the clusters of swelling buds on the apple trees, and made
the orchard look as though it had burst into bloom in an hour. Then the
sun came out, there were a few dazzling moments when the world was all
blue and silver, and then the whiteness faded.

And the sap! How it dripped! Once an hour I had to make the rounds,
bringing back gallons each time, and the fire under my pan was kept up so
that the boiling down might keep pace with the new supply.

"They do say snow makes it run," shouted a passer-by, and another called,
"You want to keep skimmin'!" Whereupon I seized my long-handled skimmer
and fell to work. Southern Connecticut does not know much about syrup, but
by the avenue of the road I was gradually accumulating such wisdom as it
possessed.

The syrup was made. No worse accident befell than the occasional
overflowing of a pail too long neglected. The syrup was made, and bottled,
and distributed to friends, and was the pride of the household through the
year.

* * * * *

"This time I will go early," I said to Jonathan; "they say the late
running is never quite so good."

It was early March when I got up there this time--early March after a
winter whose rigor had known practically no break. Again Jonathan could
not come, but Cousin Janet could, and we met at the little station, where
Hiram was waiting with Kit and the surrey. The sun was warm, but the air
was keen and the woods hardly showed spring at all yet, even in that first
token of it, the slight thickening of their millions of little tips,
through the swelling of the buds. The city trees already showed this, but
the country ones still kept their wintry penciling of vanishing lines.

Spring was in the road, however. "There ain't no bottom to this road now,
it's just dropped clean out," remarked a fellow teamster as we wallowed
along companionably through the woods. But, somehow, we reached the farm.
Again we bored our holes, and again I was thrilled as the first bright
drops slipped out and jeweled the ends of the spouts. I watched Janet. She
was interested but calm, classing herself at once with Hiram and Jonathan.
We unearthed last year's oven and dug out its in