The Choir Invisible

It was ten o'clock that morning of mid-May. The rain was over. Clouds and

mists were gone, leaving an atmosphere of purest crystal. The sun floated a

globe of gold in the yielding blue. Above the wilderness on a dead treetop,

the perch of an eagle now flashing like a yellow weather-vane, a thrush

poured the spray-like far-falling fountain of his notes over upon the bowed

woods.

Beneath him the dull green domes of the trees flashed as though

inlaid with gems, white and rose. Under these domes the wild grapevines,

climbing the forest arches as the oak of stone climbs the arches of a

cathedral, filled the ceiling and all the shadowy spaces between with fresh

outbursts of their voluptuous dew-born fragrance. And around the

rough-haired Satyr feet of these vines the wild hyacinth, too full of its

own honey to stand, fell back on its couch of moss waiting to be visited by

the singing bee.

The whole woods emerged from the cloudy bath of Nature with the coolness,

the freshness, the immortal purity of Diana united to the roseate glow and

mortal tenderness of Venus; and haunted by two spirits: the chaste, unfading

youth of Endymion and the dust-born warmth and eagerness of Dionysus.

Through these woods, feeling neither their heat nor their cold, secured by

Nature against any passion for either the cooling star or the inflaming

dust, rode Amy--slowly homeward from the ball. Yet lovelier, happier than

anything the forest held. She had pushed her bonnet entirely off so that it

hung by the strings at the back of her neck; and her face emerged from the

round sheath of it like a pink and white tulip, newly risen and bursting

forth.

When she reached home, she turned the old horse loose with many pattings and

good-byes and promises of maple sugar later in the day; and then she bounded

away to the garden to her aunt, of whom, perhaps, she was more truly fond

than of any one in the world except herself.

Mrs. Falconer had quickly left off work and was advancing very slowly--with

mingled haste and reluctance--to meet her.

"Aunt Jessica! Aunt Jessica!" cried Amy in a voice that rang like a small

silver bell, "I haven't seen you for two whole nights and three whole days!"

Placing her hands on Mrs. Falconer's shoulders, she kissed her once on each

cheek and twice playfully on the pearly tip of the chin; and then she looked

into her eyes as innocently as a perfect tulip might look at a perfect rose.

Mrs. Falconer smilingly leaned forward and touched her lips to Amy's

forehead. The caress was as light as thistle-down--perhaps no warmer.