"What is the Work like?" asked Andy. "Would you be willing to try it? Remember, it is difficult and wearying and is dead as soon as it is born." "Yes, by glory, I would," shouted Andy. "_Then dress this maid until you die!_" commanded the Voice. At the words, my friend, there was music of a million armies of all sorts of birds, whistling and whirring over the green earth; and the echoes of their tremendous singing shook all the trillions of tiny new leaves and made the waves of air to dance--how shall I say?--like the waves of a sea of music running out forever. And there, on the grass, sure enough, was a little naked baby girl just able to stand. Very quiet, she was, and she looked up at Andy with eyes of a fairy blue--as if they'd been colored by that very same fairy that goes about with a brush coloring all the violets we ever see. (The ones we never see, you know, are never colored.) "We-e-ell!" cried Andy, puckering up his lips and squinting up his eye-lids. "And who are you?" "I'm early Summer," she lisped. "And I'm in a dreadful hurry. I'd like some lemon-colored silk--for a mantle, you know?--And some apple-green tassels for my hair. And please do be quick about it. I'm due, you see. So I'll be ever so much obliged if you'll only hurry." Andy whistled ruefully. "Now, _that_ would take some weaving, miss." He hesitated. "I don't think I'm that skillful." The little goddess looked hurriedly away over her shoulder as if she were about to depart. "And then," Andy continued, "I have no loom up here; and no warp; and no filling. Nothing at all to work with, you see. I--" But while he was stumbling about with his excuses, he saw the little one actually fading away before his eyes; and a pain most bitter caught at his heart, as if he were losing all his life. So he cried out: "But I'll _try_ miss. Give me a little time, miss. Oh, please, my wee bairn. I have an old handloom of my grandfather's; and I can go and hurry and fetch all the stuff up here somehow and I'll work as fast as I can. Indeed, I'll try my best." Whereat, you see, the babe came back to him, smiling as sweetly as early Summer ever smiled. "There really isn't such an awful hurry," she said. "We can always have Weather, you know, and hold these things back a bit." That was the beginning of it.