SUMMER was dying hard, for although it had passed, by the calendar,
Mother Nature was still keeping up her customary attitude.
There had been a soft rain in the night and every spear of grass was
brilliantly green and tipped with crystal. The smoke bushes in the
garden plot, and the asparagus bed beyond them, looked misty as the sun
rose higher, drying the soaked earth and dripping branches. Spiders'
webs, marvels of lace, dotted the short grass under the apple trees.
Every flower that had a fragrance was pouring it gratefully into the
air; every bird with a joyous note in its voice gave it more joyously
from a bursting throat; and the river laughed and rippled in the
distance at the foot of Town House Hill. Then dawn grew into full
morning and streams of blue smoke rose here and there from the Edgewood
chimneys. The world was alive, and so beautiful that Waitstill felt like
going down on her knees in gratitude for having been born into it and
given a chance of serving it in any humble way whatsoever.
Wherever there was a barn, in Riverboro or Edgewood, one could have
heard the three-legged stools being lifted from the pegs, and then
would begin the music of the milk-pails; first the resonant sound of the
stream on the bottom of the tin pail, then the soft delicious purring of
the cascade into the full bucket, while the cows serenely chewed their
cuds and whisked away the flies with swinging tails. Deacon Baxter was
taking his cows to a pasture far over the hill, the feed having grown
too short in his own fields. Patty was washing dishes in the kitchen and
Waitstill was in the dairy-house at the butter-making, one of her chief
delights. She worked with speed and with beautiful sureness, patting,
squeezing, rolling the golden mass, like the true artist she was, then
turning the sweet-scented waxen balls out of the mould on to the big
stone-china platter that stood waiting. She had been up early and for
the last hour she had toiled with devouring eagerness that she might
have a little time to herself. It was hers now, for Patty would be busy
with the beds after she finished the dishes, so she drew a folded
paper from her pocket, the first communication she had ever received in
Ivory's handwriting, and sat down to read it.