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The gates ajar; or, Our loved ones in Heaven
The gates ajar or Our loved ones in Heaven Author:Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. May J. I AM afraid that my brave resolutions are all breaking down. The stillness of the May day is creeping into everything ; the days in w... more »hich the furlough was to come ; in which the bitter Peace has come instead, and in which he would have been at home, never to go away from me any more. The la2y winds are choking me. Their faint sweetness makes me sick. The moist, rich loam is ploughed in the garden ; the grass, more golden than green, springs in the warm hollow by the front gate ; the great maple, just reaching up to tap at the window, bla2es and bows under its weight of scarlet blossoms. I cannot bear their perfume ; it comes up in great breaths when the window is opened. I wish that little cricket, just waked from his winter's nap, would not sit there on the sill, and chirp at me. I hate the bluebirds flashing in and out of the carmine cloud that the maple makes, and singing, singing everywhere. It is easy to understand how Bianca heard " the nightingales sing through her head," how she could call them "owl-like birds," who sang "for spite," who sang " for hate," who sang " for doom." Most of all I hate the maple. I wish winter were back again to fold it away in white, with its bare, black fingers only to come tapping at the window. "Roy's maple," we used to call it. How much fun he had out of that old tree ! As far back as I can remember, we never consideredspring to be officially introduced till we had had a fight with the red blossoms. Roy used to pelt me well; but vith that pretty chivalry of his, which was rare in such a little fellow, which developed afterwards into that larer treatment of women, of which everyone speaks who speaks of him, he would stop the play the instant it threatened roughness. I used to be glad, though, that I had...« less