PART THREE

THE GREAT EMOTION


PART FOUR

THE PAYMENT




I

SPRING IN THE WORLD AND ALL THINGS FOR THE YOUNG


Birds called. Breezes played among branches just bursting into
green. Daffodils, proud and erect, stood in clumps about the
dazzling lawn. Young, pulsing, eager things elbowed their way
through last year's leaves to taste the morning sun; the wide-eyed
celandine, yellower than butter; the little violet, hugging the
earth for fear of being seen; the sturdy bourgeois daisy; the pale-
faced anemone, earliest to wake and earliest to sleep; the blue
bird's-eye in small family groups; the blatant dandelion already a
head and shoulders taller than any neighbor. Every twig in the old
garden bore its new load of buds that were soft as kittens' paws;
and up the wrinkled trunks of ancient trees young ivy leaves chased
each other like school-boys.