Anyhow, it's a long ways ahead, six weeks is, especially
at the time when you do wish so fervently that it would come spring.
We keep on shoveling coal in the furnace, and carrying out ashes,
and longing and crying: "Oh, for pity's sakes! When is this going
to stop?" And then, one morning, we awaken with a start Wha - what?
Sh! Keep still, can't you? There is a more canorous and horn-like
quality to the crowing of Gildersleeve's rooster, and his hens chant
cheerily as they kick the litter about. But it wasn't these cheerful
sounds that wakened us with a start. There! Hear that? Hear it?
Two or three long-drawn, reedy notes, and an awkward boggle at a
trill, but oh, how sweet! How sweet! It is the song-sparrow,
blessed bird! It won't be long now; it won't be long.
The snow fort in the back-yard still sulks there black and dirty.
"I'll go when I get good and ready, and not before," it seems to
say. Other places the thinner snow has departed and left behind it
mud that seizes upon your overshoe with an "Oh, what's your rush?"
In the middle of the road it lies as smooth as pancake-batter. A
load of building stone stalls, and people gather on the sidewalk to
tell the teamster quietly and unostentatiously that he ought to have
had more sense than to pile it on like that with the roads the way
they are.
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