hills; spring is too wonderful—every hour that we have to take from it for the commonplace necessities of food and sleep we give with grudging protests, like a miser parting with his cherished gold. Misers of spring we truly are.
Yet though. Ethelwyn loves it all, there is a large difference between us. For some days past I've observed upon her part a growing disposition to take it all seriously, which is distinctly rebuking to my ignorantly joyous hours. Finally, yesterday she announced her intention of spending the morning down-town.
I offered to go with her, but she told me that she couldn't be so selfish when both my eyes were full of arbutus and hepatica. Ethelwyn's figures of speech are sometimes slightly startling, but she seldom fails to comprehend one's mood. It was a morning when the hills were silver and the air full of sweet, fleeting breaths of perfume, and the birds were in ecstasy. Ethelwyn kissed me and ran for my old hat and jammed it down on my head and pushed me out the door.
"Go to your old hills!" she laughed. "The spell is upon you—you can't deny it. You'll wander till you're tired out and then come home shining—I know you! It's perfectly reprehensible, such absolute content in such profound ignorance. I asked you the difference between a beetle and a bug the other day, and you couldn't tell me. I, Miss Goldwin, am going on a search for wisdom."
"That's too long," I returned, "it's a life search—and then you don't find it. But joy is waiting on the doorstep this morning. You'd better come, Ethelwyn."
"Never!" she replied firmly. "It isn't often that I thirst for knowledge, but I do to-day, and I'm going to make the most of it. You might as well stop your beguilements—I am adamant. And, besides, you're wasting time—yours, I mean, not mine."
The last argument prevailed and I fled. Oh, what a day it was! For a week past great winds had been abroad again and every little growing thing stood still—it almost seemed as if they held their breath. Then at last the wind went away, and in a single night a green tide swept over the hills and dashed to the treetops in spray of rose and pink and white. And above it all, a sky deep and tender as June, with, hour after hour, great, white, shining sails moving slowly across it. Something must have been going on up there—some great review of heavenly squadrons. I couldn't keep my eyes from the wonderful pageant—that is, I couldn't until, in the humiliating fashion the flesh has of intruding upon our holiest hours, I was compelled to lower my gaze by a violent crick in my neck.
And after all I had been passing such a world of beauty below the sky! All the mystery of the new leaves (year after year I've laughed at the ignorance of the people who scour the country for azalea and
