Susan Coolidge

Clover Susan Coolidge

It was one of those afternoons in late April which are as mild and balmy as any Juneday. The air was full of the chirps and twitters of nest-building birds, and of sweetindefinable odors from half-developed leaf-buds and cherry and pear blossoms. Thewisterias overhead were thickly starred with pointed pearl-colored sacs, growing purplerwith each hour, which would be flowers before long; the hedges were quickening intolife, the long pensile willow-boughs and the honey-locusts hung in a mist of fine greenagainst the sky, and delicious smells came with every puff of wind from the bed of whiteviolets under the parlor windows.