Windyridge

by W. Riley

No sooner had this sensation died down than the village thermometer rose, two days later, to fever heat on the report that little Willie Jones had ventured to test the ice upon the huge water-butt which occupied a slightly elevated position at the end of his father's house and was "drownded dead for sure."

Not a soul in the village knew what course to pursue under the circumstances, and every eager helper might have avowed with truth and sincerity that he had done the things he ought not to have done, and left undone the things he ought to have done; and it was fortunate for poor little Willie that my First Aid lessons had qualified me for dealing with an emergency of this kind.

Farmer Goodenough and I worked hard for an hour, and my arms ached with the effort, but at length the reluctant engine began to move, throbbing fitfully but with increasing strength; and hot flannels and heated bricks, with judicious but energetic rubbing, completed the treatment and brought life and colour back again, so that when the doctor arrived there was little left to be done.

I believe I was excited myself when it was all over, and if my head had not been fixed very solidly upon my shoulders it would certainly have been turned that day by the ridiculous and extravagant eulogies of my neighbours.

Then followed the great blizzard. I suppose our cousins across the water would have small respect for such an unpretentious specimen as we experienced, but to me it was a revelation of what old Mother Nature can do when she clenches her teeth and puts her hand to it.

A bright but grey sky overhung the earth when I set out soon after dinner for a brisk constitutional, and I never for a moment anticipated any change in the conditions. For some weeks past we had had alternations of frost and snow and thaw, and for several days the bare, brown earth had been frozen hard, and the roadway was furrowed as a field, with ice filling every rut and wrinkle.

It was an ideal day for a sharp walk, provided one's organs were sound and one's limbs supple, and though a thousand needles pricked my cheeks and hands, and my ears smarted with the pinching they got, my whole body was soon aglow and I revelled in the encounter.

I took the downward road which winds slowly round to Marsland, and tried to discover the heralds of spring. On such a day everybody should be an optimist. I think I generally am as regards myself, whatever the weather may be like, but I must admit that so far I have had little cause for being anything else. It is only when I begin to dwell on the miseries of other people, and the wrongs which it seems impossible to put right, that the black mood settles upon me.

But on this particular day I felt on good terms with the world, and thought of the sunny days which lay ahead, and of the coming morning, when the heather bells would feel the warm breath of summer upon their face, and open their eyes in loving response to her kiss.

And here and there in the shelter of the hedges, and by the banks of the ice-bound stream where the bridge crosses it I found the heralds I sought—tiny shoots of green pushing their way through the hard soil or the warm coverlet of faded leaves. By and by the icy fingers will have to relax their grasp, and the woods and hedgerows will be gay with the little fairy creatures, who dress so daintily in colours of a hundred hues for our enjoyment, and who smile, perhaps, to think what a limited monarchy King Frost maintains after all.