time, too, along the roadsides, big hawthorn shrubs and wild plum were
in blossom, and in the sheltered fields the mossy sod was pied with
white and purple violets, whose flowerets so outstripped their
half-grown leaves that blue and milky ways were seen in woodland glades.

With the sense of freedom that comes with the thus sudden advent of the
young summer, Winifred Rexford strayed out of the house one morning.
She did not mean to go, and when she went through the front gate she
only meant to go as far as the first wild plum-tree, to see if the white
bloom was turning purple yet, as Principal Trenholme had told her it
would. When she got to the first plum-tree she went on to the second.
Winifred wore a grey cotton dress; it was short, not yet to her ankles,
and her broad hat shaded her from the sun. When she reached the second
group of plum-trees she saw a scarlet tanager sitting on a telegraph
pole--for along the margin of the road, standing among uncut grass and
flowers and trees, tall barkless stumps were set, holding the wires on
high. Perhaps they were ugly things, but a tree whose surface is uncut
is turned on Nature's lathe; at any rate, to the child the poles were
merely a part of the Canadian road, and the scarlet tanager showed its
plumage to advantage as it sat on the bare wood. There was no turning
back then; even Sophia would have neglected her morning task to see a
tanager! She crept up under it, and the bird, like a streak of red
flame, shot forth from the pole, to a group of young pine trees further
on.

So Winifred strayed up the road about a quarter of a mile, till she came
to the gate of the Harmon garden. The old house, always half concealed,
was quickly being entirely hidden by the massive Curtains the young
leaves were so busily weaving. The tanager turned in here, as what bird
would not when it spied a tract of ground where Nature was riotously