a loftier region, such genius lay in the harmony, the arabesque, the
delicate lacework of embroidery with which the tune was inwrought;
now high, now low, now major, now minor, now sad, now gay, with one
thrilling, haunting cadence recurring again and again, to be watched
for, longed for, and greeted with a throb of delight.

Davy was reading at the window, his curly head buried in a well-worn
Shakespeare opened at "Midsummer Night's Dream." Lyddy was sitting
under her favourite pink apple-tree, a mass of fragrant bloom, more
beautiful than Aurora's morning gown. She was sewing; lining with
snowy lawn innumerable pockets in a square basket that she held in
her lap. The pockets were small, the needles were fine, the thread
was a length of cobweb. Everything about the basket was small except
the hopes that she was stitching into it; they were so great that her
heart could scarcely hold them. Nature was stirring everywhere. The
seeds were springing in the warm earth. The hens were clucking to
their downy chicks just out of the egg. The birds were flying hither
and thither in the apple-boughs, and there was one little home of
straw so hung that Lyddy could look into it and see the patient
mother brooding her nestlings. The sight of her bright eyes, alert
for every sign of danger, sent a rush of feeling through Lyddy's
veins that made her long to clasp the tiny feathered mother to her
own breast.

A sweet gravity and consecration of thought possessed her, and the
pink blossoms falling into her basket were not more delicate than the
rose-coloured dreams that flushed her soul.

Anthony put in the last wooden peg, and taking up his violin called,
"Davy, boy, come out and tell me what this means!"