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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
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