“And ’tis my faith that every flower
      Enjoys the air it breathes.”

She said, “I don’t suppose they know much, but perhaps they know enough to have a good time:  who knows?”

Susy took long walks to Westbrook, and farther, coming home tired out, but loaded with precious flowers.  There were plenty of friends to give them to her from their early gardens:  broad-faced crocuses, jonquils, and lilies of the valley, and by and by lilacs, with “purple spikes.”

She gathered snowdrops, “the first pale blossoms of the unripened year,” and May-flowers, pink and white, like sea-shells, or like “cream-candy,” as Prudy said.  These soft little blossoms blushed so sweetly on the same leaf with such old experienced leaves!  Susy said, “it made her think of little bits of children who hadn’t any mother, and lived with their grandparents.”

Dotty was almost crazy with delight when she had a “new pair o’ boots, and a pair o’ shaker,” and was allowed to toddle about on the pavement in the sunshine.  She had a green twig or a switch to flourish, and could now cry, “Hullelo!” to those waddling ducks, and hear them reply, “Quack! quack!” without having such a trembling fear that some stern Norah, or firm mamma, would rush out bareheaded, and drag her into the house, like a little culprit.

It was good times for Dotty Dimple, and good times for the whole family.  Spring had come, and Prudy was getting well.  There was a great deal to thank God for!

It is an evening in the last of May.  A bit of a moon, called “the new moon,” is peeping in at the window.  It shines over Susy’s right shoulder, she says.  Susy is reading, Prudy is walking slowly across the floor, and Dotty Dimple is whispering to her kitty, telling her to go down cellar, and catch the naughty rats while they are asleep.  When kitty winks, Dotty thinks it the same as if she said,—­

“I hear you, little Miss Dotty:  I’m going.”

I think perhaps this is a good time to bid the three little girls good-by, or, as dear grandma Read would say, “Farewell!”