April passed, with all its varying moods of sun and shower, and settled
weather came.
All the earth was gay.
Land and sea
Gave themselves up to jollity
And with the heart of May
Did every Beast keep holiday.
The Carey girls had never heard of "the joy of living" as a phrase, but
oh! they knew a deal about it in these first two heavenly springs in
little Beulah village! The sunrise was so wonderful; the trees and grass
so marvellously green; the wild flowers so beautiful! Then the river on
clear days, the glimpse of the sea from Beulah's hill tops, the walks in
the pine woods,--could Paradise show anything to compare?
And how good the food tasted; and the books they read, how fresh, how
moving, how glorious! Then when the happy day was over, sleep came
without pause or effort the moment the flushed cheek touched the
cool pillow.
"These," Nancy reflected, quoting from her favorite Wordsworth as she
dressed beside her open window, "These must be
"The gifts of morn,
Ere life grows noisy and slower-footed thought
Can overtake the rapture of the sense.
"I was fifteen and a half last spring, and now, though it is only a year
ago, everything is different!" she mused. "When did it get to be
different, I wonder? It never was all at once, so it must have been a
little every day, so little that I hardly noticed it until just now."
A young girl's heart is ever yearning for and trembling at the future.
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