ke a strain
of music, and as she whispered them to herself, something rent the veil
between childhood and womanhood, and she saw herself a little girl
roaming through the forest, clinging to her father's hand and searching
for spring's wild flowers. She saw the blue violets nestling at the foot
of mossy stumps, columbines and ferns waving in damp, rocky places,
purple hepaticas, yellow celandine, the pinkish lavender bells of the
cowslip, Solomon's seal lifting its tiers of leaves by lichened rocks
around a dripping spring, and that strange white flower, more like the
corpse of a flower than the flower itself, that she had found once--and
then no more--growing by a fallen log and half buried under the drift of
fallen leaves. Suddenly she started up, hurried from the room, and ran
swift-footed down-stairs and into the kitchen, where her mother stood at
a table washing the breakfast dishes.

"Mother," she said breathlessly, "I'm going over to the woods awhile. I
want to see if the violets are in bloom yet. I'll be back after awhile."

Ellen Crawford paused in her work and looked helplessly at her daughter.
The mind of her child had always been a sealed book to her, and she was
never without a feeling of apprehension as to what Miranda would do
next. "For mercy's sake!" she said weakly. Going to the woods to look
for violets in house-cleaning time, when each day's unfinished work
overflowed into the brimming hours of the next day! There were no words
to fit such folly, and the mother only stood stupefied, looking through
the open door at the flying footsteps of her errant daughter.

Miranda ran through the back yard where the house dog lay basking in the
sun, and two broods of young chickens were "peeping" around in the wet
grass, led by their clucking mothers. The cat came purring and tried to
rub herself against Miranda's garments, but she thrust her aside and
hurried on. These creatures belonged to the house, and it was the house
from which she was fleeing. As she passed through the sagging garden
gate, a casual gust of wind stirred the boughs of a water-maple tree
near by, and scattered a shower of petals over her hair and shoulders,
while a robin in the topmost branch sang a Godspeed to the pilgrim who
was hastening to the altars of spring. Down the garden path she sped
with never a glance aside at the trim rows of early vegetables bordered
by clumps of iris and peonies, with now and then an old-fashioned rose
that