Some of them worked with faces brightened by thoughts of devoted mothers at home; the eyes of a few were shadowed by memories of mothers alienated or dead.

II

That morning on the ledge of rock at the rear of the cathedral Nature hinted to passers what they would more abundantly see if fortunate enough to be with her where she was entirely at home—­out in the country.

The young grass along the foot of this slope was thick and green; imagination missed from the picture rural sheep, their fleeces wet with April rain.  Along the summit of the slope trees of oak and ash and maple and chestnut and poplar lifted against the sky their united forest strength.  Between the trees above and the grass below, the embankment spread before the eye the enchantment of a spring landscape, with late bare boughs and early green boughs and other boughs in blossom.

The earliest blossoms on our part of the earth’s surface are nearly always white.  They have forced their way to the sun along a frozen path and look akin to the perils of their road:  the snow-threatened lily of the valley, the chill snowdrop, the frosty snowball, the bleak hawtree, the wintry wild cherry, the wintry dogwood.  As the eye swept the park expanse this morning, here and there some of these were as the last tokens of winter’s mantle instead of the first tokens of summer’s.

There were flushes of color also, as where in deep soil, on a projection of rock, a pink hawthorn stood studded to the tips of its branches with leaf and flower.  But such flushes of color were as false notes of the earth, as harmonies of summer thrust into the wrong places and become discords.  The time for them was not yet.  The hour called for hardy adventurous things, awakened out of their cold sleep on the rocks.  The blue of the firmament was not dark summer blue but seemed the sky’s first pale response to the sun.  The sun was not rich summer gold but flashed silver rays.  The ground scattered no odors; all was the budding youth of Nature on the rocks.

Paths wind hither and thither over this park hillside.  Benches are placed at different levels along the way.  If you are going up, you may rest; if you are coming down, you may linger; if neither going up nor coming down, you may with a book seek out some retreat of shade and coolness and keep at a distance the millions that rush and crush around the park as waters roar against some lone mid-ocean island.

About eleven o’clock that morning, on one of these benches placed where rock is steepest and forest trees stand close together and vines are rank with shade, a sociable-looking little fellow of some ten hardy well-buffeted years had sat down for the moment without a companion.  He had thrown upon the bench beside him his sun-faded, rain-faded, shapeless cap, uncovering much bronzed hair; and as though by this simple act he had cleared the way for business, he