"Cleaned up and young," cried Judy, "and smells delicious—like flowers and hay—"
"And soft and warm—"
"And sings and dances—"
"And is positive that if we go on looking we shall find—exactly what we're looking for."
Aunt Emily removed the other golosh—a shade more quickly than the first one. She kicked it off. The stiffness melted out of her; she smiled again.
"Well," she began—when Judy stood on tip-toe and whispered in her ear some magic sentence.
"Dawn!" Aunt Emily whispered back. "At dawn—when the birds begin to sing!"
Something had caught her heart and squeezed it.
Tim and Judy nodded vehemently in agreement. Aunt Emily dropped her umbrella then. And at the same moment a singing voice became audible in the trees behind them. The song came floating to them through the sunlight with a sound of wind and birds. It had a marvellous quality, very sweet and very moving. There was a lilt in it, a laughing, happy lilt, as though the Earth herself were singing of the Spring.
And Aunt Emily made one last vain attempt: she struggled to put her fingers in her ears. But the children held her hands. She crackled and made various oppressive and objecting sounds, but the song poured into her in spite of all her efforts. Her feet began to move upon the grass. It was awful, it was shocking, it was forbidden and against all rules and regulations: yet—Aunt Emily danced!