The sun shines across the dooryard as it hasn't shone for so long, making a thin coat of mud just at the edge of the chips and around the doorsteps. But what matters? The children run in and out, tracking up the clean floors, taking their scolding with good cheer. Isn't spring here? and don't they hear the bluebird's note in the orchard? Run! run! and put up some more little boxes on the shed and the fence-posts. Clean out the last year's nests in the hollow trees. Tell the old cat to "keep mum" and "lie low," or she will be put in a bag and dropped to the bottom of the very first hole in the ice. Cats are all right in the dead of winter, when Old Boreas is frantic in his annual mad fit. She can sit on the rug and purr to her heart's content; but when the bluebirds come, if she bethinks herself of the fact, and sharpens her claws against the trunk of a cherry-tree, she would better look out. When the old cat sharpens her claws she means business, especially if she turns her head in the direction of the orchard. From the orchard comes a soft, agreeable, oft-repeated note, there is a quivering of wings outspread, and "he" is here. There may be only one or two or six singers. They have left the lady bluebirds in a safe place until they are sure of the weather. If the outlook be bad to-morrow, the birds will retire out of sight and wait for another warm spell. But spring is really here, and the good work of the sun goes on. In a day or two the lady birds appear modestly, of paler hue than the males, quiet, but quick and glad of motion. It is the time of sweethearts. A blue beauty, whose latest coat is none the worse for winter wear, alights near the mate of his choice, sitting on a twig. He goes very near her and whispers in her ear. She listens. He caresses a drooping feather, torn in her wing as she dodged the brush in the journey. She thinks it very kind of him to do so. Suddenly an early fly appears, traveling zigzag, slowly, somewhere, probably on some family business of its own. Bluebird spies it and makes for it. Not on his own account! Oh, no! He snatches it leisurely and presents it to his love, still sitting on the tree. She thanks him, and wipes her beak on a smaller twig. So little by little, and by very winning ways, does this gentle blue courtier pay his suit of Miss Bluebird. A chance acquaintance of bluebird sidles up to the same branch on which the two have been sitting. Bluebird courtier likes him not; he will have no rival, and so he drives the intruder away as far as the next tree, returning to his sweet and singing a low warble about something we do not understand. Probably he is giving her to understand that he will "do the right thing" by her all the time, never scolding (as indeed he never does), and looking to the family supplies, and in all things that pertain to faithful affection will prove himself worthy of her. She consents, taking his word for it, and they set about the business of the season.