it and carry her with it. For a moment it seemed as if she had left the earth far below, and was soaring in the soft depths of blueness themselves. And suddenly, even as she felt it, she heard, on the topmost branch of the bare tree, a brief little rapturous trill, and her heart gave a leap again, and she felt her cheeks grow warm.
"It is a bluebird," she said—"it is a bluebird, and it is the Spring, and that means that the time is quite near."
She had a queer little smile on her face all day as she worked. She did not know it was there herself, but Mrs. Macartney saw it.
"What's pleasing you so, Meggy, my girl?" she asked.
Meg wakened up with a sort of start.
"I don't know exactly," she said.
"You don't know," said the woman good-naturedly.
"You look as if you were thinking over a secret, and it was a pleasant one."
That evening it was not cold when they sat in the Straw Parlour, and Meg told Robin about the bluebird
"It gave me a strange feeling to hear it," she said. "It seemed as if it was speaking to me. It said, 'You must get ready; it is quite near.'"
