Page:Stanwood Pier--Harding of St Timothys.djvu/244

214 "Besides, he won't be having a bad time taking it easy down South, and missing all this beastly weather. Francis, let me see if I can still pick out 'The Blue Danube.'"

He reached for Stoddard's banjo and began thumbing the strings.

"O great Scott!" said Harry. "Just when we were trying to be as happy as we can! Take it from him, Francis, for goodness' sake!"

Perhaps even if they had not determined to show such a brave spirit, they could not long have remained melancholy. For this was the happy term, the one most crowded with activity, the one in which the sentiment of those who were so soon to leave ripened to its sweetest, and made them more than ever before responsive to all that was kind and gentle in the life, all that was beautiful in the place.

Spring was the time, too, of the flowering forth of sports as well as of woods and fields. Canoes were launched in the ponds, "scrub" baseball games were played on the rough meadow behind the upper school long before the playground was in condition, the crews had