Purple Springs | Page 6

come.
Coming down stairs on light feet, she threw a red sweater around her
shoulders and went out the front door. In her great moments, Pearl
craved the open sky and great blue distances, and on this day of all days,
she wanted to breathe deep of its golden air. Somewhere she had read
about air that tasted like old wine! And as she stood facing the early
sun that had come up in a cloudless sky of deepest blue, she knew what
was meant.
From the dull tomb of yesterday, with its cavern-like coldness and
gloom, had come the resurrection of a new day, bright, blue, sparkling,
cloudless, for March had slipped in quietly in the night, with a gentle
breeze of wonderful softness, a quiet breeze, but one that knew its
business, and long before daylight it had licked the hard edges of the
drifts into icy blisters, and had purred its way into all sorts of forgotten
corners where the snow lay thickest.
It went past Pearl's face now with velvety smoothness--patting her
cheeks with a careless hand, like a loving friend who hurries by with no
time for anything but this swift re-assurance. But Pearl knew that the
wind and the sun and the crisp white snow, on which the sunbeams
danced and sparkled, were her friends, and were throbbing with joy this
morning, because it was her great day.
She went in at last, remembering that the children must be washed and
fed for school, and found Danny's garter for him just in time to save
him from the gulf of despair which threatened him. She made up the
two tin pails of lunch with which her young brothers would beguile the

noontide hour. She put a button on Mary's spat, in response to her
request of "Aw, say Pearl, you do this--I can't eat and sew." The sudden
change in the weather forced a change in the boys' foot-gear, and so
there had to be a frenzied hunt for rubbers and boots to replace the
frost-repelling but pervious moccasin.
One by one, as the boys were ready, fed, clothed and rubbered, they
were started on their two-mile journey over the sunny, snowy road,
Danny being the first to so emerge, for with his short, fat legs, he could
not make the distance in as short a time as the others.
"Mr. Donald wants you to come over on Friday, Pearl--I almost forgot
to tell you--he wants you to talk to us about the city, and the schools
you were in--and all that. I told him you would!"
This was from Jimmy, the biggest of the Watson boys now attending
school.
"All right," said Pearl, "sure I will."
There was more to the story, though, and Jimmy went on,--
"And the Tuckers said they bet you thought yourself pretty smart since
you'd been to the city....
"And then what happened," asked Pearl, when he paused;
"He went home--it wouldn't stop bleedin'! but Mr. Donald says a good
nose-bleed wouldn't hurt him--though of course it was wrong to
fight--but it was no fight--you know what they're like--one good
thump--and they're done!"
"Good for you, Jimmy" said his sister approvingly, "never pick a
quarrel or hit harder than you need, that's all!--but if trouble comes--be
facing the right way!"
"You bet," said Jimmy, as he closed the door behind him and the
stillness which comes after the children have gone fell on the Watson

home.
"Sure and ain't the house quiet when they're gone," said Mrs. Watson,
looking out of the window across the gleaming landscape, dotted in six
places by her generous contribution to the Chicken Hill school.
"And it won't be long until they're gone--for good."
"Cheer up, honest woman," cried Pearl gaily, "you havn't even lost
either Teddy or me, and we're the eldest. It looks to me as if you will
have a noisy house for quite a while yet, and I wouldn't begin to worry
over anything so far away--in fact, ma, it's a good rule not to worry till
you have to, and don't do it then!"
Pearl was bringing back "the room" to the state of tidiness it enjoyed
during school hours, moving about with joyous haste, yet with strict
attention to every detail, which did not escape her mother's eye.
"It's grand to be as light of heart as you are, Pearlie child," she said,
"I'm often afraid for you--when I think of all the sad things in life and
you so sure that everything will happen right. It is to them that the
world is brightest that the darkest days can come, and the lightest heart
sometimes has heaviest mournin'."
A little wither of disappointment went over Pearl's bright face, but she
shook it off impatiently. She wished her mother