And then while he sat there, half dreaming and half awake, the stillness
grew suddenly full of the singing of blue birds. Spring blossomed
radiantly beneath his eyes, and the faint green and gold of the meadows
blazed forth in a pageant of colour.

"I'm glad I didn't miss it," he thought. "That's the most that can be
said, I reckon--I'm glad I didn't miss it."

The old hound, dreaming of flies, flapped his long ears in the sunshine,
and a robin, hopping warily toward a plate of seed-cakes on the arm of
Reuben's chair, winged back for a minute before he alighted suspiciously
on the railing. Then, being an old and a wise bird, he advanced again,
holding his head slightly sideways and regarding the sleeping man with
a pair of bright, inquisitive eyes. Reassured at last by the silence, he
uttered a soft, throaty note, and flew straight to the arm of the chair
in which Reuben was sitting. With his glance roving from the quiet man
to the quiet dog, he made a few tentative flutters toward the plate of
cake. Then, gathering courage from the adventure, he hopped deliberately
into the centre of the plate and began pecking greedily at the scattered
crumbs.

CHAPTER XIX

TREATS OF CONTRADICTIONS

As Molly passed down the Haunt's Walk, it seemed to her, also, that the
spring had suddenly blossomed. A moment before she had not known
that the path she trod was changing to emerald, that the meadows were
spangled with wild-flowers, that the old oaks on the lawn were blushing
in rose and silver. For weeks these miracles had happened around her,
and she had not noticed. As oblivious to them as old Adam Doolittle was,
she had remembered only that her birthday came on the seventeenth of
April, when, except for some luckless mishap, the promise of the spring
was assured.

A red-winged blackbird darted like a flame across the path in front of
her, and following it into the open, she found Kesiah gathering wild
azalea on the edge of the thicket.

At the girl's approach, the elder woman rose from her stooping posture,
and came forward, wearing a frown, which, after the first minute, Molly
saw was directed at the sunlight, not at herself. Kesiah's long, sallow
face under the hard little curls of her false front, had never
appeared more grotesque than it did in the midst of the delicate spring
landscape. Every fragile blossom, every young leaf, every blade of
grass, flung an insult at her as she stood there frowning fiercely at