Dark, and true, and tender is the North. Heaven bless the rhymster who first penned those words. Spring is stealing hack to the prairie, and our world is a world of beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed with flat-bottomed cumulus-clouds, tier beyond tier above a level plane of light, marking off the infinite distance like receding mile-stones on a world turned over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head of a wild duck, pumping north with a black throb of wings, melts away to a speck in the opaline air. Back among the muskeg reeds the waders are courting and chattering, and early this morning I heard the plaintive winnowing call-note of the Wilson snipe, and later the punk-e-lunk love-cry of a bittern to his mate. There’s an eagle planing in lazy circles high in the air, even now, putting a soft-pedal on the noise of the coots and grebes as he circles over their rush-lined cabarets. And somewhere out on the range a bull is lowing. It is the season of love and the season of happiness. Dinkie and Poppsy and I are going 373 out to gather prairie-crocuses. They are thick now in the prairie-sod, soft blue and lavender and sometimes mauve. We must dance to the vernal saraband while we can: Spring is so short in this norland country of ours. It comes late. But as Peter says, A late spring never deceives....
I thought I had offended Peter for life. But when he appeared late this afternoon and I asked him why he had kept away from me, he said these first few days naturally belonged to Dinkie and he’d been busy studying marsh-birds. He looked rather rumpled and muddy, and impressed me as a man sadly in need of a woman to look after his things.
“Let’s ride,” said Peter. “I want to talk to you.”
I was afraid of that talk, but I was more afraid something might happen to interfere with it. So I changed into my old riding-duds and put on my weather-stained old sombrero and we saddled Buntie and Laughing-Gas and went loping off over the sun-washed prairie with our shadows behind us.
We rode a long way before Peter said anything. I wanted to be happy, but I wasn’t quite able to be. I tried to think of neither the past nor the future, but there were too many ghosts of other days loping along the trail beside us. 374
“What are you going to do?” Peter finally inquired.
“About what?” I temporized as he pulled up beside me.
“About everything,” he ungenerously responded.
“I don’t know what to do, Peter,” I had to acknowledge. “I’m like a barrel without hoops. I want to stick together, but one more thump will surely send me to pieces!”
“Then why not get the hoops around?” suggested Peter.