"You love yourself still better than him." "Three months ago he hardly dared hope for me--he would have kissed the dust under my feet--and now he flies into fits of jealousy because I dance with another man." "'Tis human natur to go by leaps an' starts in love, Molly." "It's a foolish way, grandfather." "Well, I ain't claimin' that we're over-wise, but thar's al'ays life ready to teach us." When the snow thawed, spring appeared so suddenly that it looked as if it had lain there all winter in a green and gold powder over the meadows.

Flashes of blue, like bits of fallen sky, showed from the rail fences; and the notes of robins fluted up from the budding willows beside the brook.

On the hill behind Reuben Merryweather's cottage the peach-trees bloomed, and red-bud and dogwood filled the grey woods with clouds of delicate colour.

Spring, which germinated in the earth, moved also, with a strange restlessness, in the hearts of men and women.

As the weeks passed, that inextinguishable hope, which mounts always with the rising sap, looked from their faces.
On the morning of her birthday, a warm April day, Molly smiled at herself in the mirror, and because the dimples became her, wondered how she could manage to keep on smiling forever.