looked as if it were tired of growing and blooming in the same spot
so many years. If one had stopped her and said: "Where are you going?"
she could not have told him where. If he had asked: "What do you seek?"
again she would have been at a loss for a reply. But she had heard a
call more imperative than the voice of father or mother, more
authoritative than the voice of conscience; something had passed out of
her life with the passing of childhood and first youth; she was going to
find the precious lost joy; and the power that guides the bird in its
autumnal flight to the south and brings it north again was guiding her
feet to the woods in spring.

She pushed aside some loose palings and crept through the opening into
the pasture that lay back of the garden. The cows stopped feeding and
stared at her in mild surprise as she stood, irresolute and wavering,
looking back at the house, where her mother was lifting the burden of
the day's toil, and then at the orchard on one side, where the peach
trees were faintly flushed with pink. In the middle of the pasture stood
a group of elms. When the wind passed over them, their branches swayed
with the grace of willows, and against the blue sky their half-grown
leaves were delicate as the fronds of the maidenhair fern. The elms
seemed to beckon her, and she crossed over and stood for a moment
looking up at the sky "in a net",--the net of leafy branches. While she
gazed upward, a sudden wind came blowing from the direction of the
forest, and on its breath was the mysterious sweetness that is one of
the surest tokens of spring. It is as if every tree and plant of the
forest had sent forth a premonition of its blooming, a spirit perfume
waiting to be embodied in a flower. Miranda drew a long breath and
looked across the meadow to the freshly plowed field whose western
boundary line was "all awave with trees", each clad in its own
particular tint of verdure, from the silver green of the silver poplar
to the black green of the cedars. The dogwood, that white maiden of the
forest, was still in hiding; the wild cherry, that soon would stand like
a bride in her wedding veil, was now just a shy girl in a dress of
virginal green; the purplish pink of the red-bud flower was barely
visible on its spreading limbs. The Great Artist had merely outlined and
touched here and there with his brush the picture which later on he
would fill in with the gorgeous coloring of summer's full leafage and
fu