its million little channels toward the buds, already beginning to
redden for their blooming, and sent the blood in little Roxie's veins
dancing upward too, until it blossomed in her cheeks and lips fairer
than in any maple-tree.

"How pleasant it is to be alive!" said the little girl aloud, while a
squirrel running up the old oak-tree overhead stopped, and curling his
bushy tail a little higher upon his back, chattered the same idea in
his own language. Roxie stopped to listen and laugh aloud, at which
sound the squirrel frisked away to his hole, and the little girl,
singing merrily, went on her way, crossed the river on the ice, and on
the other bank stopped and looked wistfully down a side path leading
into the denser forest away from her direct road.

"I really believe the checkerberries must have started, it is so
springy," she thought; "I've a mind to go down and look in what Jake
calls 'Bear-berry Pasture,' though I told him they were not
bear-berries, but real checkerberries." So, saying to herself Roxie ran
a few steps down the little path, stopped, stood still for a minute,
then slowly turned back, saying:

"No, I wont, either, for may be I wouldn't get to the camp with the
nut-cakes before noon, and then they would have eaten all their cheese.
No, I'll go right on, and not stay there any time at all, but come back
and get the checkerberries; besides, mother said she'd be lonesome
without me, so I'd better not stay, any way."

So Roxie, flattering herself like many an older person with the fancy
that she was giving up her selfish pleasure for that of another, while
really she was carrying out her own fancy, went singing on her way, and