Elly Crittenden had meant to go straight home from school as usual with the other children, Paul and Mark, and Addle and Ralph Powers.  And as usual somehow she was ever so far behind them, so far that there wasn’t any use trying to catch up.  Paul was hurrying to go over and see that new old man next door, as usual.  She might as well not try, and just give up, and get home ever so late, the way she always did.  Oh well, Father wasn’t at home, and Mother wouldn’t scold, and it was nice to walk along just as slow as you wanted to, and feel your rubber boots squizzle into the mud.  How good it did seem to have real mud, after the long winter of snow!  And it was nice to hear the brooks everywhere, making that dear little noise and to see them flashing every-which-way in the sun, as they tumbled along downhill.  And it was nice to smell that smell . . . what was that sort of smell that made you know the sugaring-off had begun?  You couldn’t smell the hot boiling sap all the way from the mountain-sides, but what you did smell made you think of the little bark-covered sap-houses up in the far woods, with smoke and white steam coming out from all their cracks, as though there was somebody inside magicking charms and making a great cloud to cover it, like Klingsor or the witch-ladies in the Arabian Nights.  There was a piece of music Mother played, that was like that.  You could almost see the white clouds begin to come streeling out between the piano-keys, and drift all around her.  All but her face that always looked through.

The sun shone down so warm on her head, she thought she might take off her woolen cap.  Why, yes, it was plenty warm enough.  Oh, how good it felt!  How good it did feel!  Like somebody actually touching your hair with a warm, soft hand.  And the air, that cool, cool air, all damp with the thousand little brooks, it felt just as good to be cool, when you tossed your hair and the wind could get into it.  How good it did feel to be bare-headed, after all that long winter!  Cool inside your hair at the roots, and warm outside where the sun pressed on it.  Cool wind and warm sun, two different things that added up to make one lovely feel for a little girl.  The way your hair tugged at its roots, all streaming away; every single little hair tied tight to your head at one end, and yet so wildly loose at the other; tight, strong, firm, and yet light and limber and flag-flapping . . . it was like being warm and cool at the same time, so different and yet the same.

And there, underneath all this fluttering and tossing and differences, there were your legs going on just as dumb and steady as ever, stodge, stodge, stodge!  She looked down at them with interest and appreciation of their faithful, dutiful service, and with affection at the rubber boots.  She owed those to Mother.  Paul had scared her so, when he said, so stone-wally, the way Paul always spoke as if that settled everything, that none of the little girls at school wore rubber boots, and he thought Elly oughtn’t to be allowed to look so queer.  It made him almost ashamed of his sister, he said.  But Mother had somehow . . . what had she said to fix it? . . . oh well, something or other that left her her rubber boots and yet Paul wasn’t mad any more.