* * * * *
And now, again, it was spring and Priscilla was fourteen. Standing in the
garden path, her yoke across her shoulders, her ears straining at the
sound she heard, the old poem returned to her as it had not for years.
She faltered over the words at the first attempt, but with the second
they rushed vividly to her mind and seemed set to the music of that
"pat-pat-pat" sound on the water. An unaccountable excitement seized
her--that new but thrilling sense of nearness and kinship to life and the
lovely meaning of spring. She was no longer a little girl looking on at
life; she was part of it; and something was going to happen after the
long shut-in winter!
And presently the McAlpin boat came in sight around Lone Tree Island
and in it stood Jerry-Jo quite alone, paddling straight for the
landing-place! For a moment Priscilla hardly knew him. The winter
had worked a wonder upon him. He was almost a man! He had the manners,
too, of his kind--he ignored the girl on the rocks.
But he had seen her; seen her before she had seen him. He had noted
the wonderful change in her, for eighteen is keen about fourteen,
particularly when fourteen is full of promise and belongs, in a
sense, to one.
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