The new year was four months old. The flowers were teething: the tiny robins were able to go alone, and above the breezy hum of many thousand voices, above the monotonous and ocean-like jar of omnibus wheels, I could hear the babbling of hyaline rills in pleasant woodland places! I could not see the silver threads of water winding in and out among the cool young grass; I could not guess where they were; but through the city smoke, over the dingy chimney-tops, they spake to me with kindly voices! I knew that daisies were fulling in sunny meadows, and that the dandelion trailed its gold by the dusty road-sides: for "The delicate-footed Spring was come." I knew it by the geranium at my window. It had put forth two sickly leaves. Two sickly leaves for me, and the world alive with vernal things! Spring, thou Queen of the Twelve! Dainty, dewy Spring-- "Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped-up flowers," when I write of thee! Thy breath is the amber sunshine, and thy foot-prints are violets! Hide Winter in thy mantle: crown his cold brow with mignionette: hang morning-glories on his icicles: keep him from me forever! "For winter maketh the light heart sad, And thou--thou makest the sad heart gay!" "Barry," said I, "the sunshine has taken me by the hand, to lead me into a sweet New-England village. There is my manuscript. Read it, if you can, condemn it, if you will, and tell me what you think of it when I return." That awful critic put DAISY'S NECKLACE under his arm, and walked away--a victim to friendship, a literary Damon of the Nineteenth Century. I. _As children gathering pebbles on the shore._ MILTON. _No daintie flower or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossomes drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be found To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al around._ EDMUND SPENCER. I. THE LITTLE CASTLE-BUILDERS. _The House by the Sea--the Round Window--God's Eyes in Flowers--the Day-Dreamers--A Picture--An Angel--Old Nanny--On the Sea-Shore--Shell-Hunting--Bell's Freak and Mortimer's Dream--Asleep._ Imagine, if you will, one of the quaintest old country mansions that was ever built--a big-chimneyed, antique-gabled, time-browned old pile, and you have a picture of the Ivyton House as it was in summers gone by.