Out in the woods the leaves that rustled so bravely when we shuffled our feet through them last fall are sodden and matted. It is warm in the woods, for the sun strikes down through the bare branches, and the cold wind is fended off. The fleshy lances of the spring beauty have stabbed upward through the mulch, and a tiny cup, delicately veined with pink, hangs its head bashfully. Anemones on brown wire stems aspire without a leaf, and in moist patches are May pinks, the trailing arbutus of the grown-ups. As we carry home a bunch, the heads all lopping every way like the heads of strangled babies, we can almost hear behind us in the echoing forests a long, heart-broken moan, as of Rachel mourning for her children, and will not be comforted because they are not. The wild flowers don't look so pretty in the tin cups of water as they did back in the woods.
There is something cheap and common about them. Throw 'em out. The poor plants that planned through all the ages how to attract the first smart insects of the season, and trick them into setting the seeds for next years' flowers did not reckon that these very means whereby they hoped to rear a family would prove their undoing at the hands of those who plume themselves a little on their refinement, they "are so fond of flowers."Old Winter hates to give up that he is beaten. It's a funny thing, but when you hear a person sing, "Good-a-by, Summer, good-a-by, good-a-by," you always feel kind of sad and sorry. It's going, the time of year when you can stay out of doors most of the time, when you can go in swimming, and the Sunday-school picnic, and the circus, and play base-ball and camp out, and there's no school, and everything nice, and watermelons, and all like that. Good-by, good-by, and you begin to sniff a little. The departure of summer is dignified and even splendid, but the earth looks so sordid and draggle-trailed when winter goes, that onions could not bring a tear.
Old winter likes to tease. Aha! You thought I was gone, did you?
Not yet, my child, not yet!" And he sends us huckleberry-colored clouds from the northwest, from which snow-flakes big as copper cents solemnly waggle down, as if they really expected the schoolboy to shout: "It snows! Hurrah!" and makes his shout heard through parlor and hall. But they only leave a few dark freckles on the garden beds. Alas, yes! There is no light without its shadow, no joy without its sorrow tagging after. It isn't all marbles and play in the gladsome springtide. Bub has not only to spade up the garden - there is some sense in that - but he has to dig up the flower beds, and help his mother set out her footy, trifling plants.
The robins have come back, our robins that nest each spring in the old seek-no-further. To the boy grunting over the spading-fork presents himself Cock Robin. "How about it? Hey? All right? Hey?"he seems to ask, cocking his head, and flipping out the curt inquiries with tail-jerks. Glad of any excuse to stop work, the boy stands statue-still, while Mr. Robin drags from the upturned clods the long, elastic fish-worms, and then with a brief "Chip!"flashes out of sight. Be right still now. Don't move. Here he comes again, and his wife with him. They fly down, he all eager and alert to wait upon her, she whining and scolding. She doesn't think it's much of a place for worms. And there's that boy yonder.
He's up to some devilment or other, she just knows. She oughtn't to have come away and left those eggs. They'll get cold now, she just knows they will. Anything might happen to them when she 's away, and then he 'll be to blame, for he coaxed her. He knows she told him she didn't want to come. But he would have it. For half a cent she'd go back right now. And, Heavens above! Is he going to be all 'day picking up a few little worms?
She cannot finish her sentences for her gulps, for he is tamping down in her insides the reluctant angleworms that do not want to die, two or three writhing in his bill at once, until he looks like Jove's eagle with its mouth full of thunderbolts. And all the time he is chip-chipping and flirting his tail, and saying: "How's that?
All right? Hey? Here's another. How's that? All right? Hey?
Open now. Like that? Here's one.
Oh, a beaut! Here's two fat ones? Great? Hey? Here y' go. Touch the spot? Hey? More? Sure Mike. Lots of 'em. Wide now. Boss.
Hey? Wait a second - yes, honey. In a second. . . . I got him.
Here's the kind you like. Oh, yes, do. Do take one more. Oh, you better.""D' ye think I'm made o' rubber?" she snaps at him. "I know I'll have indigestion, and you'll be to bla - Mercy land! Them eggs!"and she gathers up her skirts and flits. He escorts her gallantly, but returns to pick a few for himself, and to cock his head knowingly at the boy, as much as to say: "Man of family, by Ned.
Or - or soon will be. Oh, yes, any minute now, any minute."And if I remember rightly, he even winks at the boy with a wink whose full significance the boy does not learn till many years after when it dawns upon him that it meant: "You got to make allowances for 'em.
