Meanwhile the work of the farm was toward, and every day gave us more ado to dispose of what itself was doing.  For after the long dry skeltering wind of March and part of April, there had been a fortnight of soft wet; and when the sun came forth again, hill and valley, wood and meadow, could not make enough of him.  Many a spring have I seen since then, but never yet two springs alike, and never one so beautiful.  Or was it that my love came forth and touched the world with beauty?

[Illustration:  182.jpg Spring was in our valley]

The spring was in our valley now; creeping first for shelter shyly in the pause of the blustering wind.  There the lambs came bleating to her, and the orchis lifted up, and the thin dead leaves of clover lay for the new ones to spring through.  There the stiffest things that sleep, the stubby oak, and the saplin’d beech, dropped their brown defiance to her, and prepared for a soft reply.

While her over-eager children (who had started forth to meet her, through the frost and shower of sleet), catkin’d hazel, gold-gloved withy, youthful elder, and old woodbine, with all the tribe of good hedge-climbers (who must hasten while haste they may)—­was there one of them that did not claim the merit of coming first?

There she stayed and held her revel, as soon as the fear of frost was gone; all the air was a fount of freshness, and the earth of gladness, and the laughing waters prattled of the kindness of the sun.

But all this made it much harder for us, plying the hoe and rake, to keep the fields with room upon them for the corn to tiller.  The winter wheat was well enough, being sturdy and strong-sided; but the spring wheat and the barley and the oats were overrun by ill weeds growing faster.  Therefore, as the old saying is,—­

    “Farmer, that thy wife may thrive,
     Let not burr and burdock wive;
     And if thou wouldst keep thy son,
     See that bine and gith have none.”

So we were compelled to go down the field and up it, striking in and out with care where the green blades hung together, so that each had space to move in and to spread its roots abroad.  And I do assure you now, though you may not believe me, it was harder work to keep John Fry, Bill Dadds, and Jem Slocomb all in a line and all moving nimbly to the tune of my own tool, than it was to set out in the morning alone, and hoe half an acre by dinner-time.  For, instead of keeping the good ash moving, they would for ever be finding something to look at or to speak of, or at any rate, to stop with; blaming the shape of their tools perhaps, or talking about other people’s affairs; or, what was most irksome of all to me, taking advantage as married men, and whispering jokes of no excellence about my having, or having not, or being ashamed of a sweetheart.  And this went so far at last that I was forced to take two of them and knock their heads together; after which they worked with a better will.