late-cream egg so slowly that it would be a month before she came to the ultimate string. Jodie's never lasted at all; he never could wait; and then he would give other boys licks, and even old Shep—she couldn't stop him! Wild, red-cheeked, red-nosed little Jodie, coming tearing in all snow, mittens lost, though she'd sewn them on a tape and run it through his coat sleeves; little hands red, wet with snow, cold and stiff as a bird's claws. She could feel them now. Charlotte starting off to school with her pencil box like a row of books, a pretty red maple leaf for painting, an extra pear for Miss Miller. Jodie milking his tricycle—it had been a cow for one whole winter—Jodie getting his fingers caught in the clothes wringer. Gone, as if they had been two children made of snow.
"Well, Charlotte, I think"
"Yes, dear, I was just thinking myself. Well, Aunt Kate, we've had a delightful evening."
Kate and Evelyn and Joe went out on the porch to say good night to them. It had begun to rain. There was the sound of the rain entering the earth, the smell of wet leaves and wet earth. The spring night was full of the up-pushing and overflow of life, green jets breaking up from beneath the surface, fecundity and hard resistless passion of new life.
"Why, where's the car?"
"We walked. Hoagland hasn't been getting enough exercise."
