t the bed with a light head and wobbly legs.

Of course I wasn't an idiot. I knew when I looked from our south
window exactly what was to be seen. The person who wrote that piece
was the idiot. It sang and sounded pretty, and it pulled you up and
pushed you out, but really it was a fool thing, as I very well knew. I
couldn't imagine daisies peeping through frozen grass. Any baby should
have known they bloomed in July. Skunk cabbage always came first, and
hepatica. If I had looked from any of our windows and seen daisies and
buttercups in March, I'd have fallen over with the shock. I knew there
would be frozen brown earth, last year's dead leaves, caved-in apple
and potato holes, the cabbage row almost gone, puddles of water and mud
everywhere, and I would hear geese scream and hens sing. And yet that
poem kept pulling and pulling, and I was happy as a queen--I wondered
if they were for sure; mother had doubts--the day I was wrapped in
shawls and might sit an hour in the sun on the top board of the back
fence, where I could see the barn, orchard, the creek and the meadow,
as you never could in summer because of the leaves. I wasn't looking
for buttercups and daisies either. I mighty well knew there wouldn't
be any.

But the sun was there. A little taste of willow, oak and maple was in
the air. You could see the buds growing fat too, and you could smell
them. If you opened your eyes and looked in any direction you could
see blue sky, big, ragged white clouds, bare trees, muddy earth with
grassy patches, and white spots on the shady sides where unmelted snow
made the icy feel in the air, even when the sun shone. You couldn't
hear yourself think for the clatter of the turkeys, ganders, roosters,
hens, and everything that had a voice. I was so crazy with it I could
scarcely hang to the fence; I wanted to get down and scrape my wings
like the gobbler, and scream louder than the gander, and crow oftener
than the rooster. There was everything all ice and mud. They would
have frozen, if they hadn't been put in a house at night, and starved,
if they hadn't been fed; they were not at the place where they could
hunt and scratch, and not pay any attention to feeding time, because of
being so bursting full. They had no nests and babies to rejoice over.
But there they were! And so was I! Buttercups and daisies be-hanged!
Ice and mud really! But if you breathed that air, and shut your eyes,
north, you could see b