"Another new novel?"
"Well,—another novel."
"What's it about?"
"A boy and a girl."
"A love story?"
"Well,—it's about a boy and a girl."
"Do they marry?"
"I said it was about a boy and a girl."
"And are they happy?"
"Well,—it's a love story."
"But all love stories aren't happy!"
"Yes they are,—if it's love."
Birds called. Breezes played among branches just bursting into green.Daffodils, proud and erect, stood in clumps about the dazzling lawn.Young, pulsing, eager things elbowed their way through last year'sleaves to taste the morning sun; the wide-eyed celandine, yellower thanbutter; the little violet, hugging the earth for fear of being seen;the sturdy bourgeois daisy; the pale-faced anemone, earliest to wakeand earliest to sleep; the blue bird's-eye in small family groups; theblatant dandelion already a head and shoulders taller than anyneighbor. Every twig in the old garden bore its new load of buds thatwere soft as kittens' paws; and up the wrinkled trunks of ancient treesyoung ivy leaves chased each other like school-boys.
Spring had come again, and its eternal spirit spread the message ofnew-born hope, stirred the sap of awakening life, warmed the bosom of awintry earth and put into the hearts of birds the old desire to mate.But the lonely girl turned a deaf ear to the call, and rounded hershoulders over the elderly desk with tears blistering her letter.
"I'm miserable, miserable," she wrote. "There doesn't seem to beanything to live for. I suppose it's selfish and horrid to grumblebecause Mother has married again, but why did she choose the verymoment when she was to take me into life? Oh, Alice, what am I to do? Ifeel like a rabbit with its foot in a trap, listening to the traffic onthe main road—like a newly fledged bird brought down with a brokenwing among the dead leaves of Rip Van Winkle's sleeping-place. You'lllaugh when yo