Before supper June
slipped up to her little hiding-place at the pool and sat on the
old log saying good-by to the comforting spirit that always
brooded for her there, and, when she stood on the porch at sunset,
a new spirit was coming on the wings of the South wind. Hale felt
it as he stepped into the soft night air; he heard it in the
piping of frogs--"Marsh-birds," as he always called them; he could
almost see it in the flying clouds and the moonlight and even the
bare trees seemed tremulously expectant. An indefinable happiness
seemed to pervade the whole earth and Hale stretched his arms
lazily. Over in Lonesome Cove little June felt it more keenly than
ever in her life before. She did not want to go to bed that night,
and when the others were asleep she slipped out to the porch and
sat on the steps, her eyes luminous and her face wistful--looking
towards the big Pine which pointed the way towards the far silence
into which she was going at last.
XII
June did not have to be awakened that morning. At the first
clarion call of the old rooster behind the cabin, her eyes opened
wide and a happy thrill tingled her from head to foot--why, she
didn't at first quite realize--and then she stretched her slender
round arms to full length above her head and with a little squeal
of joy bounded out of the bed, dressed as she was when she went
into it, and with no changes to make except to push back her
tangled hair.
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