"Why, yes, you might as well, I suppose, though I'll be lonesome without you all day, baby. But it would be better for you to ride home, so stay."
It was a lovely day in the latter part of March, and although the ground was covered with snow, and the brooks and rivers were still fast bound in ice, there was something in the air that told of spring,—something that set the sap in the maple-trees mounting through its million little channels toward the buds, already beginning to redden for their blooming, and sent the blood in little Roxie's veins dancing upward too, until it blossomed in her cheeks and lips fairer than in any maple-tree.
"How pleasant it is to be alive!" said the little girl aloud, while a squirrel running up the old oak-tree overhead stopped, and curling his bushy tail a little higher upon his back, chattered the same idea in his own language. Roxie stopped to listen and laugh aloud, at which sound the squirrel frisked away to his hole, and the little girl, singing merrily, went on her way, crossed the river on the ice, and on the other bank stopped and looked wistfully down a side path leading into the denser forest away from her direct road.
"I really believe the checkerberries must have started, it is so springy," she thought; "I've a mind to go down and look in what Jake calls 'Bear-berry Pasture,' though I told him they were not bear-berries, but real checkerberries." So, saying to herself Roxie ran a few steps down the little path, stopped, stood still for a minute, then slowly turned back, saying:
"No, I wont, either, for may be I wouldn't get to the camp with the nut-cakes before noon, and then they would have eaten all their cheese. No, I'll go right on, and not stay there any time at all, but come back and get the checkerberries; besides, mother said she'd be lonesome without me, so I'd better not stay, any way."
So Roxie, flattering herself like many an older person with the fancy that she was giving up her selfish pleasure for that of another, while really she was carrying out her own fancy, went singing on her way, and reached the camp just as her father struck his ax deep into the log where he meant to leave it for an hour, and Jake, her handsome elder brother, took off his cap, pushed the curls back from his heated brow, and shook out the hay and grain before old Rob, whose whinny had already proclaimed dinner-time.
"Why, if here isn't sis with a tin kettle, and I'll be bound some of ma'am's nut-cakes in it!" exclaimed Jake, who had rather mourned at the said cakes not being ready before he left home, and then he caught the little girl up in his arms, kissed her heartily, and put her on Rob's back, whence she slid down, saying gravely:
"Jake, Ma says I'm getting too old for rough play. I'll be twelve years old next June."
"All right, old lady; I'll get you a pair of specs and a new cap or two for a birthday present," laughed Jake, uncovering the tin kettle, while his father said:
"We wont have you an old woman before you're a young one, will we, Tib? Come, sit down by me and have some dinner. You're good to bring us the nut-cakes and get here in such good season."