Chapter 1

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_Title:_ In the Sweet O’ the Year
_Date of first publication:_ 1907
_Author:_ L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
_Date first posted:_ Apr. 15, 2017
_Date last updated:_ Apr. 15, 2017
Faded Page eBook #20170439

This ebook was produced by: Alex White & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

In the Sweet O’ the Year
L. M. Montgomery
First published _The Housekeeper_, June 1907.

[Illustration: _I PICKED UP MY TRAIN AND MADE A CURTSEY AND SAID, “HAVE
I FOUND FAVOR IN THE KING’S SIGHT.”_]

It is dear mid-spring and one must just be glad to be alive in such a
fresh tremulous young world! I feel exactly as Eve must have felt in the
garden of Eden before all the trouble began. I know just how new and
wonderful everything must have seemed to her and how she must have
thought that life could never be long enough to drain all the sweetness
that was waiting for her on every side. I wonder if the early mornings
were as delightful in Eden as they are here in our garden at Mount
Holly—or as they are in that other garden over at Golden Milestone,
just separated from ours by a demure little box hedge. I do not really
believe that they could have been or Eve, poor thing, would never have
even felt tempted to talk with serpents and go looking for forbidden
knowledge. It would have been enough simply to have been alive on such
mornings—such crisp, pale-purply mornings that creep up so whitely and
freshly over the long shore fields and tiptoe into our gardens, as it
were, with their fingers on their lips, bidding us be silent and enjoy,
while the little milky-white blossoms come out on the cherry-trees and
all the birches and poplars rustle and quiver with brand-new,
golden-green baby leaves. To see the long shafts of sunrise sunshine
striking down through the dark fir boughs and lying on the old stone
bench where Stephen and I like best to sit, or on the little mossy mound
where the tiniest of tiny ferns are unrolling themselves like little,
curly-headed, green pixy folk waking up from a nap, is just to give you
a feeling that is like a prayer.

Springs are always so new, too. No spring is ever exactly like any other
spring. It has always something of its own to be its own peculiar
loveliness. And then to watch the life coming back into the world and
all the green things that you’ve loved all your life poking their heads
up as soon as the snow is gone, every one of them in the very spot you
know where to look for it—why, it’s just to stand by and watch a bit of
creation. You feel like one of the morning stars of old that sang for
joy.

I am sure I must be the happiest girl in the world at any time, even
when the snowdrifts are big and glistening around Mount Holly and the
birds have gone and the flowers are asleep away down under the
whiteness, and all the trees are bare except the stanch old firs and
spruces that never lose their greenness, just like good, true friends
that are the same under all conditions; but I’m happier than ever in
this, the sweet o’ the year. I know when I am dead I shall sleep
peaceably enough under the grasses through the summer and autumn and
winter, but when the spring comes my heart will throb and stir in my
sleep and call wistfully out to all the voices calling far and wide in
the world above me.

I said so to Stephen this very afternoon as we sat on the old bench in
his garden. I had gone over to show him my new dress. I always like to
have Stephen see me in a new dress before anybody else; he can always
tell me whether it’s right or not and if it pleases him I feel that I
can defy criticism. There is nobody else here to tell me. Dear old dad,
with his nose buried all the time in a book doesn’t study fashion
plates. If he knows that girls wear dresses at all it’s as much as he
does. And old Martha, our housekeeper, who never wears anything but
rusty black and thinks I’m a brand not yet plucked from the burning,
isn’t much better. So there’s only Stephen; whenever I get a new dress I
put it on and fly over to him. I can tell the minute he sees me by the
look in his eyes whether he likes a dress or not before he says a word;
and if he doesn’t I simply go back to the house, take off that dress,
and hand it to Martha to put in the next box her Ladies’ Aid sends out
west to the mission station. Martha thinks I’m wildly extravagant; but
it all works together for good to the missionaries’ wives who haven’t to
live up to Stephen’s tastes and who, poor souls, must often be glad to
get some frilly and fanciful and altogether unlike the sensible, ugly
things the Ladies’ Aid sends them.

I was very anxious about this particular dress. It was so pretty that I
felt that it would break my heart if I had to send it away to the
mission field so I fairly prayed that Stephen would like it. As soon as
I came home this afternoon I put it on. It was a pale green thing—to
suit the spring, you understand. I knew Stephen believed in a woman’s
dressing in harmony with the seasons—and it had such lovely clinging
lines and the dearest, lacy, frilly sleeves just to the elbows. I did my
hair in the way Stephen likes best—parted plainly and knotted low on
the neck, with just a bit of a curl on my forehead, and I put a wee,
pink house-rose over my left ear. I thought I looked rather nice,
although my mirror always turns me green; so I slipped over to the
Golden Milestone garden and gave the call Stephen taught me ten years
ago when he first came to live at Golden Milestone and I was a little
girl of ten. We were chums from the very first and whenever I went into
either of the gardens and gave that call Stephen would come out to me,
the very best playmate that ever was, even if he were a grown-up man.
It’s a funny little call—like three clear bird-notes, the first just a
medium pitch, the second higher, the third droning away into lowness and
sweetness long drawn out.