There were the cucumber frames (he had helped Jabe to make them); the
old summer house in the garden (he had held the basket of nails and
handed Jabe the tools when he patched the roof); the little workshop
where Samantha potted her tomato plants (and he had been allowed to
water them twice, with fingers trembling at the thought of too little or
too much for the tender things); and the grindstone where Jabe ground
the scythes and told him stories as he sat and turned the wheel, while
Gay sat beside them making dandelion chains. Yes, it was all there, and
he was a part of it.
Timothy had all the poet's faculty of interpreting the secrets that are
hidden in every-day things, and when he lay prone on the warm earth in
the cornfield, deep among the "varnished crispness of the jointed
stalks," the rustling of the green things growing sent thrills of joy
along the sensitive currents of his being. He was busy in his room this
afternoon putting little partitions in some cigar boxes, where, very
soon, two or three dozen birds' eggs were to repose in fleece-lined
nooks: for Jabe Slocum's collection of three summers (every egg acquired
in the most honorable manner, as he explained), had all passed into
Timothy's hands that very day, in consideration of various services well
and conscientiously performed. What a delight it was to handle the
precious bits of things, like porcelain in their daintiness!--to sort
out the tender blue of the robin, the speckled beauty of the sparrow; to
put the pee-wee's and the thrush's each in its place, with a swift throb
of regret that there would have been another little soft throat bursting
with a song, if some one had not taken this pretty egg.
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