Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/25



HE sun mounted higher in the turquoise sky. The birds sang more sleepily. Faint and far away, from the flats down by the river, a few belated frogs still trebled and fluted. Then, lazily, the warm breeze stirred, and died away, and stirred again, scattering a drifting shower of cherry-blossoms through the heavy, indolent sunlight, murmurous with the hum and drone of many wings, where, for the hundredth time, a song-sparrow preached his vagabond philosophy of "Sweet! Sweet! Idleness—Idleness—idleness!"

It was a cloudless Saturday morning, and the end of May. There was something more than the smell of buds and young leaves in the air, something more than the sound of frogs and sparrows and bobolinks,—for when Piggie Brennan, the butcher's son, had