There was a scent of spring in the air. “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to--” love, the poet says; and so, perhaps, does a girl’s. But before either is warmly awakened to that interest, spring touches them thrilling with a profusion of thought and planning and anticipation, not so distinct as love. The young creatures feel the sap of life mounting within them. Oft-times they know nothing more, and have formed no definite idea either of what they want, or why; but their minds are running over with the flood of living. Their plans go lightly skimming through the air, now poising on a branch, and again flashing widely on devious wings to all the points of the compass like so many birds. There was no immediate change necessary in the placid course of their school-girl existence; but they leaped forward to meet the future with all the force of their energies. Yet, perhaps, it was only one of them who did this. Lucy was too calm in the certainty of the changes that sooner or later would happen to her--changes already mapped out and arranged for her, as she was well aware--to be able to give herself up to these indefinite pleasures of imagination. But Katie leaped at her future with the fervor of a fresh imagination. She made up her mind to sacrifice herself, and give Lucy her cousin in less time than many would take to decide whether they should give up a ribbon. She sunk into silence for a little time while she was pondering it, but never from any indecision; only because, in her rapid foresight of all that was necessary, she did not quite see how the first step, the introduction of these two to each other, was to be brought about.