"Jonathan," I gasped, "this isn't spring; it's winter of the most furious description. Let's reform the calendar and put up signs to warn the flowers. But I want my spring! I want it now!" "Well," said Jonathan, "there it is. Look!" And he pointed across the brush of the near fence line, where a meadow stretched away, brown with the stubble and matted tangle of last year's grass. Halfway up the springy slope, in a little fold of the hillside, was a shimmer of green--vivid, wonderful. I forgot the wind. "Oh-h! Think of being a cow now and eating that! Eating spring itself!" "If you were a cow," said Jonathan, with the usual masculine command of applicable information, "they wouldn't let you eat it." "They wouldn't! Why not? Does it make them sick?" "No; crazy." "Crazy!" "Just that. Crazy for grass. They won't touch hay any more, and there isn't enough grass for them--and there you are!" "Did you make that up as you went along, Jonathan?" "Ask any farmer." But I think I will not ask a farmer. He might say it was not true, and I like to think it is. I am sorry the cows cannot have their grass, but glad they have the good taste to refuse hay. I should, if I were a cow. Not being one, I do not need an actual patch of green nibble to set me crazy. The smell of the earth after a thaw, a breath of soft air, a wave of delicious sweetness, in April, in March, in February,--when it comes in January I harden my heart and try not to notice,--this is enough to spoil me for the dry fodder of winter. Hay may be good and wholesome, but I have had my taste of spring grass, and it is enough. That or nothing. No more hay for me! What that strange sweetness of the early spring is I have never fully discovered. The fragrance of flowers is in it,--hepaticas, white violets, arbutus,--yet it is none of these. It comes before any of the flowers are even astir, when the arbutus buds are still tight little green points, when the hepaticas have scarcely pushed open their winter sheaths, while their soft little gray-furred heads are still tucked down snugly, like a bird's head under its wing. Before even the snowdrops at our feet and the maples overhead have thought of blossoming, a soft breath may blow across our path filled with this wondrous fragrance. It is like a dream of May. One might believe the fairies were passing by.