"The snow has melted," gurgled the water, "here I am." It was everywhere. The sunshine made the rich green mosses look dry, but in reality they were wet, and so was everything else. Slish! slosh! Put your feet where you would, the water was everywhere. It filled the stone trough, which, being old and grey and steady, kept it still, and bade it reflect the blue sky and the gorgeous mosses; but the trough soon overflowed, and then the water slipped over the side, and ran off in a wayside stream. "Winter is gone!" it spluttered as it ran. "Winter is gone, winter-is-gone, winterisgone!" And, on the principle that a good thing cannot be said too often, it went on with this all through the summer, till the next winter came and stopped its mouth with icicles. As the stream chattered, so the birds in the wood sang--Tweet! tweet! chirrup! throstle! Spring! Spring! Spring!--and they twittered from tree to tree, and shook the bare twigs with melody; whilst a single blackbird sitting still upon a bough below, sang "Life!" "Life!" "Life!" with the loudest pipe of his throat, because on such a day it was happiness only to be alive. It was like a wonderful fairy-tale, to which Ida listened with clasped hands. Presently another song came from the wood: it was a hymn sung by children's voices, such as one often hears carolled by a troop of little urchins coming home from school. The words fell familiarly on Ida's ears: "Quite through the streets with silver sound, The flood of life doth flow; Upon whose banks on every side The wood of life doth grow. "Thy gardens and thy gallant walks Continually are green; There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers As nowhere else are seen. "There trees for evermore bear fruit, And evermore do spring; There evermore the Angels sit, And evermore do sing." Here the little chorus broke off, and the children came pouring out of the wood with chattering and laughter. Only one lingered, playing under a tree, and finishing the song. The child's voice rose shrill and clear like that of the blackbird above him. He also sang of Life--Eternal life--knowing little more than the bird of the meaning of his song, and having little less of that devotion of innocence in which happiness is praise. But Ida had ceased to listen to the singing. Her whole attention was given to the children as they scampered past the hedge, dropping bits of moss and fungi and such like woodland spoil. For, tightly held in the grubby hands of each--plucked with reckless indifference to bud and stalk, and fading fast in their hot prisons--were primroses. Ida started to her feet, a sudden idea filling her brain. The birds were right, Spring had come, and there were flowers--_flowers for Mrs. Overtheway_.