back yard!

Hello! Here at the bottom was some snow, a great big drift of it still
left, all gray and shrunk and honey-combed with rain and wind, with a
little trickle of water running away softly and quietly from underneath
it, like a secret. Well, think of there being still _snow_ left anywhere
except on top of the mountains! She had just been thinking all the
afternoon how _good_ it seemed to have the snow all gone, and here she
ran right into some, as if you'd been talking about a person, saying how
sick and tired you were of everlastingly seeing him around, and there he
was, right outside the window and hearing it all, and knowing it wasn't
_his_ fault he was still hanging on. You'd feel bad to know he'd heard.
She felt bad now! After all, the fun the snow had given them, all that
winter, sleighing and snow-shoeing and ski-running and sliding downhill.
And when she remembered how _glad_ she'd been to see the first snow, how
she and little Mark had run to the window to see the first flakes, and
had hollered, Oh goody, _goody!_ And here was all there was left, just
one poor old forgotten dirty drift, melting away as fast as it _could_,
so's to get itself out of the way. She stood looking down on it
compassionately, and presently, stooping over, gave it a friendly,
comforting pat with one mittened hand.

Then she was pierced with an arrow of hunger, terrible, devouring
starvation! Why was it she was always so _much_ hungrier just as she got
out of school, than ever at meal-times? She did hope this wouldn't be
one of those awful days when Aunt Hetty's old Agnes had let the
cookie-jar get empty!

She walked on fast, now, across the back yard where the hens, just as
happy as she was to be on solid ground, pottered around dreamily, their