“Oh, thank you, Uncle Milton! I knew spring was coming true before long! And I’ll be walking down there when they bloom again: don’t think I’m going to live in beds and wheeled-chairs forever.”
His brown old face beamed.
“Dat’s de talk!” he exclaimed gleefully. “Ef dat ain’t de Forest sperrit my name ain’t Milton, sho’! You look like yo’ pa endurin’ er de war. You keep talkin’ dat erway, honey, en feelin’ dat erway, too. Hit’s sperrit en spunk what cyores folks a sight mo’ dan doctors en physicin, I lay my little Missy gwinter be runnin’ roun’ yere yet, makin’ ole Milton hop.” He walked off, chuckling to himself.
Josie brought me a vase, and I set the flowers in it as flowers should be set, lovingly, and one by one. It has been years since I have been down in that hollow, just this side of where the road turns out into the pike; but I can see it as if I were there this minute—the maples blooming overhead, the meadow-larks flashing the white of their tail-feathers as they fly, singing, on the hill beyond; the twigs in the strip of woodland down the road, shining yellow, tan, and red with the rising sap. The blue-grass is under foot, soft and thick, and all through it rise the spears of the jonquil leaves, and the swinging, golden bells. Along the fence runs the broad band of iris, matted close, the pointed leaves already taller than the jonquils. Cardinals and mocking-birds are calling all up the hillside; and down under the willows and sycamores at the water’s edge the myrtle warblers are swarming, and thinking of donning their gay spring suits. Oh, I can see it all, all! A little wind is dancing along the hillside, and the branches touch one another softly, the dry, scraping, winter sound all gone. The wren’s spring song is in full blast, the bluebirds are twittering, and even the jays’ voices are turning sweet. The breath of life is everywhere, and the joy of it. I can feel the wind in my hair, and the grass under my flying feet—My flying feet! For a moment I had forgotten. But here are the four close walls, the narrow bed, the endless, wrenching pain. And I could not walk even to my sofa today, though the Peon’s life were my reward.—Eh, well, and what of that? Did I not run in Make-Believe? And shall I shut my eyes to joy and beauty because my locomotive apparatus is laid up for a few repairs? I may be walking clear out to the hall again before the week is out, and be out in my chair on the porch tomorrow. Love and sunshine really are enough, no matter what Grumpy says—even love without the sunshine: and here are both, and flowers besides, and the spring-time everywhere out of doors.
February 25th. Grace was here yesterday. She has a way of dropping in when she is most wanted and leaving a trail of sunshine behind her. She is a quiet little body, never hurried or fretted, and she has a genius for discovering, in the most unlikely places, virtues invisible to the naked eye. She sees the wrong and mean things, too—she’s not at all a goody-goody person; but she keeps the wrong and the wrong-doers so entirely distinct and separate that you wonder how you were ever so stupid as to confuse them. She’s really devoted to that cranky old half-brother of hers. She is always commiserating him because he did not have her mother, and his own died when he was born. She’ll explain and expound him till you think he really is noble, only he never had a chance to learn how to do noble things.
It is certainly a pity, however, that his education is in such a backward stage. Robert Lincoln and Milly are becoming much more than friends; and Cousin Jason’s infantile ignorance of other people’s rights is anything but conductive to comfort under the circumstances. But Grace’s one idea, as usual, is that dear brother Jason must not be crossed. He takes it so hard, poor fellow, when things don’t go as he wishes. And if Mr. Lincoln is as seriously fond of Milly as he professes to be, he may as well make up his mind to be satisfied with winning her, if he can succeed in doing it, and not be too exacting with her relatives.
Poor Grace! As if I don’t know the kind of young-ladyhood she believes in Milly’s having, and is simply aching to give her! But evidently Cousin Jason’s will is to be law.
The truth is, as I told Grace, Cousin Jason is just like Cousin Chad—though they’d both foam at the mouth to hear me say it. But they’ve neither of them any sense of proportion. That’s why they have no sense of humor, nor power to get their own personalities in proper perspective with other people and their rights. But why, asks Grace calmly, shouldn’t we be as sorry for a person born with no sense of proportion as for a person born with only one eye? Of course the lack of a sense of humor is harder on the kin than the lack of an eye would be—Grace admitted that handsomely; but in neither case was the afflicted party to blame. And didn’t one really deserve more sympathy when his affliction necessitated his also being a bore?
We fell to giggling as we discussed this knotty point; and I was so far converted to Grace’s charitable views that I had Uncle Milton get a basket of double jonquils for her to take to Cousin Jane. Cousin Jane always did admire my double jonquils, and somehow her own never succeed. I like the single ones much better myself; the others, like my revered relative, are too clumsy and fat. I told Grace to say I sent them to her on the principle of sweets to the sweet. And now I’ll be having another visitation, for my sins!