Was Serena taking forethought? No; I could trust her lighted face and wet eyes. She was still piously improvident. III Once more it was May, and early morning. I was out before breakfast, gathering sticks for my hearth-fire. There had been showers in the night, and an inch of new grass trembled over the ground. I tugged at a pile of brush made by my oldest apple-tree, which had fallen in a winter storm. The limbs, and even the million twigs, were all gray and green and slate-blue in their wrappings of moss, and in among them, like a burning heart, sat a cardinal. “You ought to be singing from a tree-top,” said I. “But I’m getting my breakfast. This is the _cafeteria_ of Wingland. Are you going to demolish it?” “Indeed, no!” I answered, picking up some peripheral sticks and leaving his stronghold unshaken. To thank me, he hopped to the top of the pile, and, right in my face, sang his most shamelessly seductive song. Serena put her head out of the kitchen window to listen. He paused, and deserted me for a tree-top. But sweet was air and earth. Delight summoned an antithesis. I thought of forgotten pains, some monitions of the night before. Suppose I were to die, and never again stand in that dip of the mountain when it was a brimming bowl of springtime? Perhaps there was no other planet where I might gather in my arms such beautiful gray and green and slate-blue fagots. I turned to go in, and met rebuke in the eyes of my Chicago guest. “I wonder if you are going to tell me that your woman does not know how to pick up brush.” My woman! If Serena heard that! “And after last night! Did you take your medicine?” Verily I had. She was unconvinced. “The bottle seems full.” “Oh, I took it from the cardinal’s throat,” said I, surrendering. She laughed, for there was sweetness in her, and we went in to breakfast. I had prepared it before going out, leaving Serena on guard. She was with me, not so much for the help she gave, as to save the feelings of my guest. “Do you have much of this soggy weather?” said Chicago, airily tolerant, as we took our seats. “Why, I’ve never noticed.” “We shore do,” said Serena, with gloom that was ludicrously alien to her face. “It’s li’ble to rain now fer two weeks steady.” “But I had decided not to go home to-day,” cried the guest, almost resentfully declining the hot biscuit Serena urged upon her. “Two weeks! Do you mean two weeks?” “I’ve known it to hang wet fer a month.” “Why, Serena!” “Showery like. You know it’s so, Mis’ Dolly.” “Well, we’re going to have perfect weather now. Tender, bright, with maybe a bit of dew in the air. Stay, and I promise you a miracle among springs.” I held up a glass of strawberry jam. “The kind of a spring that produced this.” And I offered her the food of heaven. “Thanks, but I’ve cut out sweets.” I caught my breath, and looked at Serena, in whose eye sparkled a triumph that said plainly: “Now you see!”