h a brush coloring all the violets we ever see. (The ones we never
see, you know, are never colored.)

"We-e-ell!" cried Andy, puckering up his lips and squinting up his
eye-lids. "And who are you?"

"I'm early Summer," she lisped. "And I'm in a dreadful hurry. I'd like
some lemon-colored silk--for a mantle, you know?--And some apple-green
tassels for my hair. And please do be quick about it. I'm due, you see.
So I'll be ever so much obliged if you'll only hurry."

Andy whistled ruefully. "Now, _that_ would take some weaving, miss." He
hesitated. "I don't think I'm that skillful."

The little goddess looked hurriedly away over her shoulder as if she
were about to depart.

"And then," Andy continued, "I have no loom up here; and no warp; and no
filling. Nothing at all to work with, you see. I--"

But while he was stumbling about with his excuses, he saw the little one
actually fading away before his eyes; and a pain most bitter caught at
his heart, as if he were losing all his life. So he cried out:

"But I'll _try_ miss. Give me a little time, miss. Oh, please, my wee
bairn. I have an old handloom of my grandfather's; and I can go and
hurry and fetch all the stuff up here somehow and I'll work as fast as
I can. Indeed, I'll try my best."

Whereat, you see, the babe came back to him, smiling as sweetly as early
Summer ever smiled. "There really isn't such an awful hurry," she said.
"We can always have Weather, you know, and hold these things back a
bit."

That was the beginning of it.

Andy was about twenty-eight years old then, and he really had an awful
time of it at first trying to work out by hand the wonderful stuffs
and colors. There was the fern-design, spangled with Sweet William,
for instance. It was only to be the edging on a shawl for her, but he
spent three days and two nights on it; and then she asked him to make
it over with jack-in-the-pulpit inset, because she was sure to grow
tired very soon of Sweet William; then she changed her mind about
jack-in-the-pulpit and decided on wintergreen berries. This is just
a sample of one teeny bit of what she demanded. And Andy was very
awkward; so naturally he began complaining of his shuttles being too
clumsy for such fine work and the cobwebby filling getting tangled up
in his thumbs and after a bit of chewing his nails in despair he swore
the thing never could be done by hand.

No sooner had he got that out, than he heard the Voice roar loud like an
e