Billy smiled cheerfully enough, but down in his heart he was disappointed. He had expected better things.
[CHAPTER XXI]
SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
I have never found any one with sufficient courage to defend the winters at Centerport. At the best they are bearable, at the worst they are beyond description. Nothing any one might say would be too harsh to apply to what the residents call “a hard winter.”
In short, from January to April the weather is everything detestable, and reminds one of a very bad little boy who has made up his very bad little mind to be as very bad as he possibly can.
And then—as like as not between a sunset and a sunrise—spring appears, and it is just as though the very bad little boy had grown sorry and repentant and had made up his mind to be very, very good and sweet and kind, and never do anything to grieve his dear, dear parents any more. And there is a soft, warm breeze blowing up the river valley, the grass on the southern side of the library is unmistakably green, a bluebird, or maybe a valiant robin, is singing from a branch of the big elm at the corner of the chapel, and there is a strong, heartening aroma of moist earth in your nostrils. And you know that from thenceforth until you leave the old green town the last of June your lines are cast in pleasant places and that it is going to be very easy to be happy and good.
Well, I suppose there are other places where spring is superlatively pleasant, where the trees and sod are extravagantly green, and where youth finds life so well worth living. Only—I have never found them. And I doubt if there is an old Erskine man the country over who can recollect the month of May at Centerport without a little catch of the breath and a sudden lighting of the eye.
For in those Mays his memory recalls Main Street and the yard were canopied with a swaying lacework of whispering elm branches, through which the sunlight dripped in golden globules and splashed upon the soft, velvety sod or moist gravel and spread itself in limpid pools. And the ivy was newly green against the old red brick buildings, the fence below College Place was lined with fellows you knew, and the slow-moving old blue watering-cart trundled by with a soft and pleasant sound of splashing water. Fellows called gaily to you as you crossed the yard, the muslin curtains at the windows of Morris and Sesson were a-flutter in the morning breeze, and from Elm Street floated the musical and monotonous chime of the scissor-grinder’s bells. What if the Finals were close at hand? The sky was blue overhead, the spring air was kind and—you were young!
I think something of this occurred to Allan when, at a quarter of ten on a mild, bright morning three days before the dual meet, he crossed the street from his room, books under arm, and turned into College Place.