Then a spread of tulips makes a crazy-quilt of a flowerbed; next the baby buds, their delicate green toes tickled by the south wind, break into laughter.

Then the stately magnolias step free of their pods, their satin leaves falling from their alabaster shoulders--grandes dames these magnolias! And then there is no stopping it: everything is let loose; blossoms of peach, cherry, and pear; flowers of syringa--bloom of jasmine, honeysuckle, and Virginia creeper; bridal wreath in flowers of white and wistaria in festoons of purple.
Then come the roses--millions of roses; on single stalks; in clusters, in mobs; rushing over summer-houses, scaling fences, swarming up trellises--a riotous, unruly, irresistible, and altogether lovable lot these roses when they break loose! And the birds! What a time they are having--thrush, bobolinks, blackbirds, nightingales, woodpeckers, little pee-wees, all fluttering, skimming, chirping; bursting their tiny throats for the very joy of living.

And they are all welcome--and it wouldn't make any difference to them if they hadn't been; they would have risked it anyway, so tempting are the shady paths and tangled arbors and wide-spreading elms and butternuts of Kennedy Square.
Soon the skies get over weeping for the lost winter and dry their eyes, and the big, warm, happy sun sails over the tree-tops or drops to sleep, tired out, behind the old Seymour house, and the girls come out in their white dresses and silk sashes and the gallants in their nankeens and pumps and the old life of out-of-doors begins once more.
And these are not the only changes that the coming of spring has wrought.

What has been going on deep down in the tender, expectant hearts of root and bulb, eager for expression, had been at work in Harry's own temperament.

The sunshine of St.George's companionship has already had its effect; the boy is thawing out; his shrinking shyness, born of his recent trouble, is disappearing like a morning frost.