It is one of those first bright, pleasant days, so welcome after the
rains and clouds that follow the long siege of winter. With the sunbeams
so warm, and the air so soft and balmy, who can choose to stay indoors?
The Lieutenant draws his chair out to the porch, and is presently joined
by Harry, who mounts the railing and proceeds to relate an adventure he
had the other night.
“You see we were out on the lake, fishing—a lot of us, and we’d caught
about a dozen trout, when up come a storm—a regular gale. Boat capsized;
out we went into the water. Rain pouring down in torrents, and so dark
you couldn’t see your hand before you. Tell you we had to swim for it.
But we got ashore at last, and they took us in at a house close by, and
dried our clothes for us, and gave us some supper, and we had a regular
jolly time of it, after all.”
“Yes, I heard about that excursion of yours from another source, and
about a boy by the name of Harry who saved another boy from drowning.”
“No! did you, though? Well, you see he didn’t know much about swimming,
and it was my doings, his going with us, and if anything had happened to
him I’d have been to blame. But, I tell you, I thought one time there we
were both goners, sure. Hallo, Edith!”
“See my new hat!” she cries, climbing up the steps. “I and mamma bought
it down street this very morning. See, it’s all trimmed with blue
ribbons!”
“Yes, it’s really pooty. There comes Marie Maross with her instruction
book; she’s been taking a music lesson. Say, Marie, come in and sit down,
won’t you? You look tired. Professor cross this morning?”
“Yes,” responds Marie, readily accepting the invitation. “He says I don’t
half practice my lessons, and it’s no such thing! I practiced a whole
half an hour yesterday, and on those wretched scales, too! they’re enough
to drive one distracted.”
Harry glares at the gate-post as if it were the professor himself, and he
is about to express, in strong terms, his poor opinion of professors of
music generally, when—
“Che! cheree! cheree! te-hee, hee, ha, ha, ha!” laughs Robin Redbreast
among the budding branches overhead. What is he cocking his shrewd black
eye at the two on the steps below for?—looking for all the world as
though he had seen them before now—passing notes to each other in that
“horrid old school-room,” when “Old Williams” wasn’t watching.
But hush, you, Sir Robin, and hush, every one. Marie lifts her hand to
impose silence; for, see, there is a wee gray sparrow prospecting about a
moss basket hanging in the porch, evidently in search of a good building
site.
But here comes the mail-carrier, who cannot stop for such trifles. As he
rapidly approaches Mrs. Sparrow flies away.
Kate, who has been setting out tulip-bulbs in her flower-beds in the
back-yard, comes to look over the letters. This one, from a small boy,
she reads aloud: