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 favorite 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 little feathered mother to her own breast.
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