Spring comes slowly to the Cape. She comes with halting footsteps, hesitant and capricious, one step forward and half a step back. You wait, and you are happier for the waiting, for at last she gives the earth her full attention and the land is renewed and green and shining amidst its four blue seas. It is the blue seas that have to do with spring’s timidity. In summer they are the air-conditioners which give the Cape comfortable temperature while the nearby cities of the Mainland swelter. In November, their warmth holds back the winter and the threat of snow turns to rain. Then, until they are warmed again, they will, in April, hold back the springtime. Then, when your heart is ready for sunlight and the promise of spring, there may be a series of gray days with a chilling blast of moist air from the Sound, and in your impatience it seems as if it must be fated to be a year without a summer. From the still-naked branches of ancient elm trees a flock of crows caw defiance at the rolling mists from the shore. The first-come robins hop disconsolately about the grass as if they wished they were elsewhere and the crocus looks brave but somehow misplaced. It is the kind of day to make you look afield for comforting affirmations that spring is really on its way after all. Then you will see the little buds of green on the lilac hedge that only yesterday were not there. Perhaps through the opened door of a silver-gray barn you may see a Cape Cod boy putting the last perfect and gleaming touches to a fishing rod. But when you pass a certain large field where the fishermen’s nets have long been spread for mending and creosoting and find them no longer there, you know that the weirs are out and, weather or no, it is Spring.