4.  Where did the waves come from?  Who was down there under the blue wall of the horizon, with the hoarse, hollow voice, urging and pushing them across the beach at her feet?  And what secret was it they were lisping to each other with their pleasant voices?  Oh, what was there beneath the sea, and beyond the sea, so deep, so broad, and so dim, too, away off where the white ships, that looked smaller than sea birds, were gliding out and in?

5.  But while Margery stood still for a moment on a dry rock, and wondered, there came a low, rippling warble to her ear from a cedar tree on the cliff above her.  It had been a long winter, and Margery had forgotten that there were birds, and that birds could sing.  So she wondered again what the music was.

6.  And when she saw the bird perched on a yellow-brown bough, she wondered yet more.  It was only a bluebird, but then it was the first bluebird Margery had ever seen.  He fluttered among the prickly twigs, and looked as if he had grown out of them, as the cedar berries had, which were dusty blue, the color of his coat.  But how did the music get in his throat?  And after it was in his throat, how could it untangle itself, and wind itself off so evenly?  And where had the bluebird flown from, across the snow banks down to the shore of the blue sea?

7.  The waves sang a welcome to him, and he sang a welcome to the waves; they seemed to know each other well; and the ripple and the warble sounded so much alike, the bird and the wave must have both learned their music of the same teacher.  And Margery kept on wondering as she stepped between the song of the bluebird and the echo of the sea, and climbed a sloping bank, just turning faintly green in the spring sunshine.

8.  The grass was surely beginning to grow!  There were fresh, juicy shoots running up among the withered blades of last year, as if in hopes of bringing them back to life; and closer down she saw the sharp points of new spears peeping from their sheaths.  And scattered here and there were small, dark green leaves folded around buds shut up so tightly that only those who had watched them many seasons could tell what flowers were to be let out of their safe prisons by and by.  So no one could blame Margery for not knowing that they were only common things, nor for stooping over the tiny buds, and wondering.

9.  What made the grass come up so green out of the black earth?  And how did the buds know when it was time to take off their little green hoods, and see what there was in the world around them?  And how came they to be buds at all?  Did they bloom in another world before they sprung up here?—­and did they know, themselves, what kind of flowers they should blossom into?  Had flowers souls, like little girls, that would live in another world when their forms had faded away in this?

10.  Margery thought she would like to sit down on the bank, and wait beside the buds until they opened; perhaps they would tell her their secret if the very first thing they saw was her eyes watching them.  One bud was beginning to unfold; it was streaked with yellow in little stripes that she could imagine became wider every minute.  But she would not touch it, for it seemed almost as much alive as herself.  She only wondered, and wondered!