A rabbit across
the brook paused and listened at the funnel-shaped mouth of his hole,
which caught the sound and redoubled it.
"Confound these boots!" said the Registrar, and pulling them off,
tossed them among the primroses. They were "elastic-sides."
The tapping ceased. A breath of the land-ward breeze came up, combing
out the tangle that winter had made in the grass, caught the brook on
the edge of a tiny fall, and puffed it back six inches in a spray of
small diamonds. It quickened the whole copse. The oak-saplings rubbed
their old leaves one on another, as folks rub their hands, feeling
life and warmth; the chestnut-buds groped like an infant's fingers;
and the chorus broke out again, the thrush leading--"_Tiurru, tiurru,
chippewee; tio-tee, tio-tee; queen, queen, que-een_!"
In a moment or two he broke off suddenly, and a honey-bee shot out
of an anemone-bell like a shell from a mortar. For a new sound
disconcerted them--a sound sharp and piercing. The Registrar had
finished his whistle and was blowing like mad, moving his fingers
up and down.
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