things, day in and day out, year after year. And there she was now singing, blithe as a lark! Well, such a disposition as Kitty's was a good gift, Miss Judy thought almost enviously, as though her own disposition were very bad indeed. Then she began to reproach herself for uncharitable thoughts of old man Mills's daughters. They may have had their reasons for bringing their father to Kitty's house to be nursed by her, instead of nursing him themselves. Perhaps they had brought him because they believed Kitty would take better care of him than they could, knowing how faithfully she had nursed their mother who had been unable to leave her bed for years, and, indeed, up to her death, only a few months before. We cannot look into one another's hearts, so Miss Judy reminded herself. No doubt we should judge more justly if we could. And Sam, Kitty's husband, was really a good, kind man, and maybe he would work sometimes were it not for the misery in his back, which always grew worse whenever work was even mentioned in his presence. Still Miss Judy could not see, try as she might, how Kitty Mills could laugh till she cried, when old man Mills snatched up the dinner which she had cooked on a hot day and flung it out the window—dishes and all.

Looking farther along the big road, Miss Judy saw that the Pettuses also were awake and stirring about. The bachelor brother and the maiden sister were both early risers. Mr. Pettus kept the general store, and he liked to have it open and ready for trade when the farmers taking grain and tobacco to market drove the big-wheeled wagons with their swaying ox-teams through the village on the way to the river. Miss Pettus arose with the first chicken that took its head from under its wing, her main interest in life being concentrated in the poultry-yard. She always held that any one having to do with hens must be up before the sun; and she used to tell Miss Judy a great deal about the Individuality of Hens, the subject with which she was best acquainted and upon which she discoursed most entertainingly and instructively. Miss Judy always listened with much interest and entire seriousness. Gentle Miss Judy had not a very keen sense of humor; it is doubtful if any really sweet woman ever had.

"The folks who think all hens are alike except the difference that the feathers make outside, don't know what they are talking about!" Miss Pettus once said, in her excited way. "Hens are as different inside as folks are. Some hens are silly and some have got plenty of sense, only they're stubborn. There's that yellow-legged pullet of mine. She's so silly that she is just as liable to lay in the horse-trough as in her nice, clean nest. Every blessed morning, rain or shine, unless I'm up and on the spot before she can get into the trough, old Baldy eats an egg with his hay, and I'm expecting every day that he'll eat her. And there's that old dorminica, the one that Kitty Mills cheated me with when we swapped hens that time. Well, the old dorminica ain't a bit silly. She's just out and out contrary. The great, lazy, fat thing! Set she won't—do what I will! And Kitty Mills knew she wouldn't—knew it just as well when we swapped as I know it this minute. There's no use trying to persuade me that she didn't. It's awful aggravating, because the dorminica's the heaviest hen I've got. Well, night before last I made up my mind that I'd make her set, whether she wanted to or not. When it began to get dark and she sauntered off to go to roost, I caught her and put her down on a nest full of fine, fresh eggs—set her down real firm and determined, like that—as much as to say 'we'll see whether you don't stay there,' and then I turned a box over her so that she couldn't get out if she tried. But I couldn't help feeling kind of uneasy, with fresh eggs gone up so high, clear to ten cents a dozen. The next morning at break o' day, cold and rainy as it was, I put on my overshoes and threw my shawl over my head, and went to take a peep under the box. And there—you'll hardly believe it, Miss Judy, but I give you my word as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church—there was that old dorminica a-standing up!"

Miss Judy had said at the time what a shame it was to waste nice eggs so, and she had spoken with sincere feeling. She had been cherishing a secret hope that she might get a few eggs from Miss Pettus to complete a setting for Speckle. Miss Judy had saved ten eggs with great care, keeping them wrapped in a flannel petticoat; but Speckle, the docile and industrious, could easily cover fifteen and was quite willing to do it. Now, Miss Judy's hope was lost through the dorminica's contrariness. She thought about this again with a pang of disappointment, as she heard the cackling and confusion going on in the Pettus poultry-yard, which told the whole neighborhood that Miss Pettus was wide awake and actively pursuing her chosen walk in life.

Sidney Wendall, the widow, was another early riser, as one needs be when earning a living for a whole family by one's wits. Sidney's house, the poorest and smallest of all the village, was the last at that end of the big road, and stood higher than the others, far up on the hillside. As Miss Judy looked toward it that morning, she was not thinking of Sidney but of Doris, her daughter, whom Miss Judy loved as her own child. At the very thought of Doris a new light came into her blue eyes and a lovelier flush overspread her fair cheeks. She stood still for a moment, gazing wistfully, waiting and longing for the far-off glimpse of Doris, which nearly always sweetened the beginning of the day. On that wet March morning there was no flutter of a little white apron, no sign of a wafted kiss. Miss Judy sighed gently as her gaze came back to her own yard. There were two japonica bushes, one standing on either side of the front gate, and as Miss Judy now glanced at them she was startled to see what seemed to be a roseate mist floating among the bare, brown branches, still dripping and shining with the night's rain.

III

PHASES OF VILLAGE LIFE

A rosy mist often floated between Miss Judy and the bare, brown things of life. She knew it, realizing fully how many mistakes she made in seldom seeing things as they actually were. She had never been able to trust her own eyes, and now they were not even as strong as they used to be, although they were as blue as ever. The japonica bushes were only a few paces distant, the front yard being but the merest strip of earth; yet the ground was very wet, and Miss Judy was wearing prunella gaiters. They were the only shoes she had; they were also the only kind she had ever known a lady to wear. Shoes made of leather, however fine, would have seemed to Miss Judy—had she known anything about them—as much too heavy, too stiff, and altogether too clumsy for the delicate, soundless step of a gentlewoman.

Moving out on the sunken stone of the door-step, she was still unable to tell with certainty whether the japonicas were actually budding. She stood peering helplessly, almost frowning in her effort to see. It was really important that she should know as soon as possible. The coming of spring was important to everybody in the Pennyroyal Region, where every man was a farmer—the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, and even the minister; and where every woman had a garden, large and rich like old lady Gordon's, or small and poor as Miss Judy's was. And the buds of the japonica were the gay little heralds of the spring, coming clad all in scarlet satin, while the rest of nature wore dull and sombre robes. Flashing out from their dark hiding-places at the first touch of the sun, the sight of them stirred the ladies of Oldfield as nothing else ever did. The men, too, always noticed this first sign of spring's approach. But it was the burning of the tobacco-beds on the wooded hillsides, the floating of long, thin banners of pale blue smoke across a wintry sky, which moved the men. It was only