hat is there
about you that just goes to the heart of even a dumb beast?"

Doris looked amazed, then thoughtful. "I suppose it is because I love
them," she said simply.

There was a great stir everywhere, it seemed. The slow spring had really
come at last. The streets were being cleared up, the gardens put in
order, some of the houses had a fresh coat of paint; the stores put out
their best array, the trees were misty-looking with tiny green shoots,
and the maples Doris thought wonderful. There were four in the row on
Common Street; one was full of soft dull-red blooms, one had little
pale-green hoods on the end of every twig, another looked as if it held
a tiny scarlet parasol over each baby bud, and the fourth dropped
clusters of brownish-green fringe.

"Oh, how beautiful they are!" cried Doris, her eyes alight with
enthusiasm.

And then all the great Common began to put on spring attire. The marsh
grass over beyond sent up stiff green spikes and tussocks that looked
like little islands, and there were water plants with large leaves that
seemed continually nodding to their neighbors. The frog concerts at the
pond were simply bewildering with the variety of voices, each one
proclaiming that the reign of ice and snow was at an end and they were
giving thanks.

"They are so glad," declared Doris. "I shouldn't like to be frozen up
all winter in a little hole."

Miss Recompense smiled. Perhaps they _were_ grateful. She had never
thought of it before.

Doris did not go back to Mrs. Webb's school, though that lady said she
was sorry to give her up. Uncle Win gave her some lessons, and she went
to writing school for an hour every day. Miss Recompense instructed her
how to keep her room tidy, but Uncle Win said there would be time enough
for her to learn housekeeping.

Then there were hunts for flowers. Betty came over; she knew some nooks
where the trailing arbutus grew and bloomed. The swamp pinks and the
violets of every shade and almost every size--from the wee little fellow
who sheltered his head under his mother's leaf-green umbrella to the
tall, sentinel-like fellow who seemed to fling out defiance. Doris used
to come home with her hands full of blooms.

The rides too were delightful. They went over the bridges to West Boston
and South Boston and to Cambridge, going through the college
buildings--small, indeed, compared with the magnificent pile of to-day.
But Boston did seem almost like a collection of isla