February 15th. When I can catch Grumpy and call him to his face by his right name, he always disappears; but blue devils are so very clever at disguising themselves, and at concentrating one’s attention on their instruments of torture!
This morning, for instance, he hid under the foot of my bed, and kept poking up all sorts of things where I couldn’t help seeing them; the things the Peon and David need me to get well for; the things I long to do; the idleness I so desperately hate—for he can make even an abstraction visible, being a very clever devil indeed. Then he held up the pain, turning it round and round, and counting off the time like a clock—minutes, hours, days, months, years, and never an end in sight. I had to look out of the window in self-defense; and there I saw a kinglet.
Except the winter wren and the humming-bird, the kinglets are the smallest birds we have. But they make up in energy what they lack in size; and this one dashed about as if his very life depended on his getting his breakfast in ten seconds and catching the seven-thirty breeze to Somewhere. Grayish-olive, of course; but was his crown of ruby-red, or of orange, crimson and black? And why should a mite of the tree-tops be so inconsiderate as to carry his trade-mark on the top of his head?
I was almost in despair about him—for when you meet a bird, it is of consuming importance to know whose acquaintance you have the pleasure of making—when he took pity on me of his own sweet will. Perhaps the breeze was a thought late, and he had a moment to spare: but he perched on a twig just outside the window, bowed his tiny head toward me, thrust one claw up between his wing and his body, and scratched the back of his neck for the whole of one second and a half!
Golden-crowned! The cunningest striped pate, red in the middle, with a yellow band on each side, a black band next the yellow, and a white line over his eye. Then he flung up his head as boldly as though it were mountain-high, jerked his wee tail-feathers frantically, and squeaked in the finest and most wiry of voices, the astonishing information that it was only Grumpy under the bed, at his old tricks—a creature for nobody to pay attention to. And as soon as he found himself discovered, my blue devil took himself off.
February 20th. If I can’t go outdoors, outdoors can come to me! The windows are all open this morning, and my bed so close under them that I can lie here and stretch my hand into the outside world, where the lilac is rapidly leafing and the elms and maples are all abloom. A moment ago Uncle Milton stepped into view, one hand holding his hat and the other filled with jonquils.
“Is you gittin’ er little better, honey?” he inquired. “Hit’s gittin’ spring-time now, en Milton wants ter see you ridin’ roun’ in dat ar cheer you got. Ef we-all puts er mattress in it, don’ you reckon we kin git you down ter de holler by de gate? Des see what come f’um down dat er way dis mawnin’—dem holler jonquils allus did beat dese yere up on de hill.”
He reached the flowers through the window and laid them upon the bed—the first flowers of the awakening year; for the violets are ageless, belonging neither to the new year nor to the old. I caught up the golden beauty with a gasp of joy.