The
seeds were springing in the warm earth. The hens were clucking to
their downy chicks just out of the egg. The birds were flying hither
and thither in the apple-boughs, and there was one little home of
straw so hung that Lyddy could look into it and see the patient
mother brooding her nestlings. The sight of her bright eyes, alert
for every sign of danger, sent a rush of feeling through Lyddy's
veins that made her long to clasp the tiny feathered mother to her
own breast.
A sweet gravity and consecration of thought possessed her, and the
pink blossoms falling into her basket were not more delicate than the
rose-coloured dreams that flushed her soul.
Anthony put in the last wooden peg, and taking up his violin called,
"Davy, boy, come out and tell me what this means!"
Davy was used to this; from a wee boy he had been asked to paint the
changing landscape of each day, and to put into words his uncle's
music.
Lyddy dropped her needle; the birds stopped to listen, and Anthony
played.
"It is this apple-orchard in May-time," said Davy; "it is the song of
the green things growing, isn't it?"
"What do say, dear?" asked Anthony, turning to his wife.
Love and content had made a poet of Lyddy. "I think Davy is right,"
she said. "It is a dream of the future, the story of all new and
beautiful things growing out of the old. It is full of the sweetness
of present joy, but there is promise and hope in it besides. It is
as if the Spring was singing softly to herself because she held the
baby Summer in her arms.
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