When I Was a Little Girl

now, fastened tight as to covers, and laid deep in the earth at a distance which, by means of spoons and hot water, we were now fast approaching. It was Spring-in-earnest. The sun was warm, robins were running on the grass, already faintly greened where the snow had but just melted; a clear little stream flowed down the garden path and out under the cross-walk. The Wells's barn-doors stood open, somebody was beating a carpet, there was a hint of bonfire smoke in the air, there were little stirrings and sounds that belonged to Spring as the gasoline woodcutter belonged to Fall. Calista was talking. "And then," she said, "some hot Summer day, when they're all sitting out on the lawn in the shade, with thin dresses and palm-leaf fans, we'll come and dig it up, and carry 'em big plates of feathery white snow, with a spoon stuck in." We were silent, picturing their delight. "Miss Messmore says," I ventured, not without hesitation, "that snow is all bugs." In fact all of us had been warned without ceasing not to eat snow ? but there were certain spots where it was beyond human power to resist it: Mr. Britt's fence, for instance, on whose pickets little squares of snow rested, which, eaten off by direct application of the lips, produced a slight illusion of partaking of caramels. Delia stopped digging. "Maybe they won't eat it when we bring it to them in Summer?" she suggested. "Then we will," said Calista, promptly. Of course they would not have ...