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Frazer had made for the young lady. This was very different in appearance from the Indian sugar; it was bright and sparkling, like sugar-candy, and tasted sweeter. The other sugar was dry, and slightly bitter: Mrs. Frazer told Lady Mary that this peculiar taste was caused by the birch-bark vessels, which the Indians used for catching the sap as it flowed from the maple-trees.
To this creek old Jacob steered his light craft, and bidding the girls collect a few dry sticks and branches for an evening fire on the sheltered side of the little bank, he soon lighted the pile into a cheerful blaze by the aid of birch bark, the hunter's tinder a sort of fungus that is found in the rotten oak and maple-trees and a knife and flint; he then lifted the canoe, and having raised it on its side, by means of two small stakes which he cut from a bush hard by, then spread down his buffalo robe on the dry grass.
The maple-trees, from being formless blobs, insensibly begin to look like lace-work. Presently the heavens and the earth are bathed in liquid blue that casts a spell so potent on the soul of him that sees it that he yearns for something he knows not what, except that it is utterly beyond him, as far beyond him as what he means to be will be from what he shall attain to.
Perhaps the boy has been out digging into the maple-trees with his jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discovery as he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement as if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn with "Sap's runnin'!" And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin.
The bright red flowers of this tree look very pretty in the spring; it grows best by the water-side, and some call it 'the swamp-maple." This was all Mrs. Frazer could tell Lady Mary about the maple-trees.
Here, between two handsome maple-trees which stood upon the sidewalk, she could see something of what was going on in the outer world without presenting the appearance of one who is fond of watching her neighbors. It was not much that she saw, for the street was a quiet one; but a very little of that sort of thing satisfied her. She was a woman who was easily satisfied.
His breath returning, though not yet operating in its usual manner, he stood gazing after her, while the glamorous parasol passed down the shady street, catching splashes of sunshine through the branches of the maple-trees; and the cottony head of the tiny dog continued to be visible, bobbing rhythmically over a filmy sleeve. Had she meant that William was indifferent?
When he passed between the two gray stone pillars with pyramidal tops and swung along the driveway between the maple-trees and chattering sparrows, there were the same boys with caps pushed back and trousers turned up, the same girls with hair up and hair down, but what a difference now for him!
He wants tellin'; most boys want tellin'; but he'll do when he is told, and he means to do right." "How long do you expect your uncle will be gone?" said Mrs. Douglass. "I do not know," said Fleda. "Have you heard from him since he left?" "Not since I came home," said Fleda. "Mr. Douglass, what is the first thing to be done about the maple-trees in the sugar season?"
The children of such families at an early age learn to take care of themselves, and fearlessly wander to a distance from home to gather wild fruits, to fish in the streams, or to search for maple-trees from which to extract sugar in the autumn. One evening the rest of the boys and girls had come in from their various occupations, except the youngest, a little fellow of four or five years old.
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