"She is," affirmed Mary, pouring the tea, "but it is real mane of
you to guess it, when I've so few new things to tell. She has been
setting two days, and she went over fifteen fresh eggs to-day. In
just twinty-one days I will have fiftane the cunningest little
chickens you ever saw, and there is more yet. I found the nest of
the gray goose, and there are three big eggs in it, all buried in
feathers. She must have stripped her breast almost bare to cover
them. And I'm the happiest I've been all winter. I hate the long,
lonely, shut-in time. I am going on a delightful spree. I shall
help boil down sugar-water and make maple syrup. I shall set hins,
and geese, and turkeys. I shall make soap, and clane house, and
plant seed, and all my flowers will bloom again. Goody for summer;
it can't come too soon to suit me."
"Lord! I don't see what there is in any of those things," said
Jimmy. "I've got just one sign of spring that interests me. If you
want to see me caper, somebody mention to me the first rattle of
the Kingfisher. Whin he comes home, and house cleans in his tunnel
in the embankment, and takes possession of his stump in the river,
the nixt day the Black Bass locates in the deep water below the
shoals. ~Thin you can count me in. There is where business begins
for Jimmy boy. I am going to have that Bass this summer, if I don't
plant an acre of corn."
"I bet you that's the truth!" said Mary, so quickly that both men laughed.
"Ahem!" said Dannie.
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