She admitted as much in words almost joyous, so
that Miss Caroline went to be with her--to fetch her when she should be
strong enough for the adventure of travel.
There were three weeks of my neighbor's absence--three weeks in which
Clem "cleaned house", polished the battered silver, "neated" the rooms,
and tried to arrange the remaining furniture so that it would look like
a great deal of furniture indeed; three weeks in which Little Arcady
again decked itself with June garlands and seemed not, at first glance,
to belie its rather pretentious name; three weeks when I studied a
calendar which impassively averred that I was thirty-five, a mirror
which added weight to that testimony, and the game which taught me with
some freshness at each failure that the greater game it symbolizes is
not meant to be won--only to be played forever with as eager a zest, as
daring a hope, as if victory were sure.
The season at hand found me in sore need of this teaching. It was then
that errant impulse counselled rebellion against the decrees of calendar
and looking-glass. If vatted wine in dark cellars turns in its bed and
mutters seethingly at this time, in a mysterious, intuitive sympathy
with the blossoming grape, a man free and above ground, with eyes to
behold that miracle, may hardly hope to escape an answering thrill to
its call.
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