![]() ![]() “You ’re considerable taller than you was in them days, Ezry,” said Asa Parsons. “ I never see no such drifts anywhere about as used to be round the old school-house we used to make caves in ’em that you could stand right up in, and have lots o’ clear room overhead, too.” “ There ain’t so much snow as there used to be when we was boys,” said Ezra Allen. I can’t say I understand it myself, but they’ve got an argument for everything nowadays.” Cutting the pines all off lets the sun get to the springs, and the ground dries right up. “ They say it ’s because the country’s been stripped of its growth so. “ Don’t seem to me as if the brooks run so high as they used,” suggested Henry Wallis, mildly. Ef you had that little bridge here before they histed up the road, I guess you’d find it well wet down.” I said the brook was high as I ever see it. The road used to be all under water in them days I know that well as anybody. “You’re thinking of the little old bridge that used to be over it when we was boys ’t was two or three foot lower than this. Parker Jenkins come near getting drowned here once, you know.” When I was a boy, ’t was customary for it to go over the bridge every spring, and I do’ know but I’ve seen it in the fall rains as well. “ Crambry Brook’s b’en over this bridge more times ’n’ you’ve got lingers and toes, Ezra,” said the third man, scornfully. I should n’t wonder if it come over the bridge, if this weather holds.” “ I’ve been looking to see that old fence of Uncle Jenkins’s topple over the stream’s most as high as I ever see it. ![]() “ ’T is warm,” said Ezra Allen, who was without his own waistcoat, and who whittled a deliciously smooth and soft bit of pine with a keen-edged knife, in ideal Yankee fashion. The folks said I should get my death o’ cold, and I do’ know but they was right, but I wa’n’t going to swelter as I did in the forenoon for nobody.” “ I wore my overcoat that I have been wearing this winter to meeting this morning, and the heft of it was more than a load of hay. “ Warm for the time o’ year, ain’t it?” asked one of these, taking off his hat, and giving his forehead a rub with his coat sleeve. He wore his every-day clothes, but the other men were in their Sunday best. He owned the pasture through which the brook ran on its way to the river but on that side of the road the ground fell off, so there was a small cascade and his own stone walls, which stopped at the edge of this, were in no danger. ![]() Two of them, who had come from church, had found the other standing there. The water had risen to within a short distance of the floor of the bridge, and the three men stood watching it with great interest. It had piled already a barricade of leaves and sticks and yellow foam against the feeble fence that crossed it at the roadside, and the posts, which were already rotted away, were leaning over and working to and fro, as if they had hard work to stand the strain, and might fall with a great splash and go down stream with the mossy rails and the sticks and yellow foam any minute. It was apt to dry up altogether just when it was needed most but now the swamp which it drained was running over with water, and sent down a miniature flood, that bit at the banks and clutched at the roots and tufts of rushes as if it wished to hold itself back. There seemed to be a general dislike to giving unqualified praise to this Sunday weather, which was sure to be like one of the sweet spring flowers that surprise us because they bloom so early, and grieve us because they are so quick to fade.Īfter church was over in the afternoon, two or three men were spending an idle hour on a little bridge where the main highway of Wyland crossed Cranberry brook a small stream enough in summer, when it could only provide water sufficient for the refreshment of an occasional horse or dog belonging to some stray traveler. The air was fragrant, and so warm that it was almost summer-like but the elderly people shook their heads, as they greeted each other gravely in the meeting-house yard, and said it was fine weather overhead, or spoke of the day reproachfully as a weather-breeder. A faint tinge of greenness suddenly appeared on the much-abused and weather-beaten grass by the roadsides, and the willows were covered with a mist of greenish gold. The frogs were lifting up their voices in all the swamps, having discovered all at once that they were thawed out, and that it was time to assert themselves. It seemed as if winter, the stern old king, had suddenly died, and as if the successor to the throne were a tender-hearted young princess, and everybody felt a cheerful sense of comparative liberty and freedom. IT was late in a lovely day of early spring, the first warm Sunday of the year, when people who had been housed all winter came out to church, like flies creeping out of their cracks to crawl about a little in the sunshine. ![]()
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