wilfully misleading demonstrations, for by ten o'clock the whole face of
nature wore a sun-sweetened smile that was positively entrancing. The
young April world seemed to spring dripping from a bath that glistened
all over with crystal water gems. Winter is staid and dignified and
grand with its stark trees and mantle of brown earth, and summer is
glowing and glorious; but very young spring is so sappy and curly and
yellow and green and lavender that you take it to heart and let it
nestle there to suck its pink apple-blow thumb, and curl up its young
sprout toes sheltered away from the cold that sets it back and the sun
that forces it to break bud. Sometimes it stays with you a day and
sometimes a week and a day, but you can't hold it back. You can just be
thankful that you had it. I was.

But if the five miles of Providence Road had been a delight, as
Redwheels and I ran along it, the dirt lane that led to The Briers was
an intoxicating joy. The wet earth, the drenched cedars, the oak buds,
the spongy moss, the reddening blackberry-bushes, and the sprouting
grain, all mingled in a queer creation odor that went right through the
pores of my skin into my vitals and made me feel as strong as an ox, or
rather, as Sam's new mule. I caught a glimpse of that mule through a
vista before I came out of the lane, plodding along before Sam and the
plow with a great splendid lurch of a gait that threw the black dirt as
high as Sam's knees as he plunged along at the plow-handles. I stopped
the car at the cedar-pole gate of Eden and stood up and shouted at the
top of my lungs, but Sam plowed on heroically, with never a glance in my
direction, and I just stood and looked at him and the mule. Seeing a man
plow cuts right down to the bottom of a woman's nature, because I
suppose it looks so--so fundamental. At least that is about the way I
felt though it was much more so until I remembered the blistered heel
and shouted again, this time in alarm. At my cry of distress Sam