"
Aunt Emily removed the other golosh--a shade more quickly than the
first one. She kicked it off. The stiffness melted out of her; she
smiled again.
"Well," she began--when Judy stood on tip-toe and whispered in her ear
some magic sentence.
"Dawn!" Aunt Emily whispered back. "At dawn--when the birds begin to
sing!"
Something had caught her heart and squeezed it.
Tim and Judy nodded vehemently in agreement. Aunt Emily dropped her
umbrella then. And at the same moment a singing voice became audible
in the trees behind them. The song came floating to them through the
sunlight with a sound of wind and birds. It had a marvellous quality,
very sweet and very moving. There was a lilt in it, a laughing, happy
lilt, as though the Earth herself were singing of the Spring.
And Aunt Emily made one last vain attempt: she struggled to put her
fingers in her ears. But the children held her hands. She crackled and
made various oppressive and objecting sounds, but the song poured into
her in spite of all her efforts. Her feet began to move upon the
grass. It was awful, it was shocking, it was forbidden and against all
rules and regulations: yet--Aunt Emily danced!
And a thin, plaintive voice, like the voice of her long-forgotten
youth, slipped out between her faded lips--and positively sang:
"The world is young with laughter; we can fly
Among the imprisoned hours as we choose.
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