Carr was a universal friend and favorite. It was a piece of news which interested everybody in the little town, for Dr. The Natchitoches had duly arrived in New York in October, and presently afterward Burnet was convulsed by the appearance of a tall young fellow in naval uniform, and the announcement of Katy’s engagement to Lieutenant Worthington. Ashe and Amy, about which some of you have read, and many things of interest to the Carr family had happened during the interval. It was nearly a year since Katy had come back from that too brief journey to Europe with Mrs. The two sisters talked busily as they sewed, but all the time an only half-conscious rapture informed their senses,-the sympathy of that which is immortal in human souls with the resurrection of natural things, which is the sure pledge of immortality. Life has conquered Death, and to the happy hearts in love with life there is joy in the victory. Who does not know the delightfulness of that first sitting out of doors after a long winter’s confinement? It seems like flinging the gauntlet down to the powers of cold. Katy and Clover Carr, sitting with their sewing on the door-steps, drew in with every breath the sense of spring. The wisterias overhead were thickly starred with pointed pearl-colored sacs, growing purpler with each hour, which would be flowers before long the hedges were quickening into life, the long pensile willow-boughs and the honey-locusts hung in a mist of fine green against the sky, and delicious smells came with every puff of wind from the bed of white violets under the parlor windows.

The air was full of the chirps and twitters of nest-building birds, and of sweet indefinable odors from half-developed leaf-buds and cherry and pear blossoms. IT was one of those afternoons in late April which are as mild and balmy as any June day.

Clover by Susan Coolidge