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When He had formed the bottom, the Great Potter shaped the rim, taking care that each side should possess an individual physiognomy. The west bank is wild; the field touches the steep gravel hills, where a few scattered hawthorn bushes and dwarf birches grow. Patches of earth show here and there, as though the turf had been peeled.
Jeanette Ware hated the night air, and took her book to the lamp on the screened porch, and so it happened that Anne and Christopher came alone to the grove where the white bodies of the birches shone like slender nymphs through the dusk. A little wind shook their leaves. "No wonder," said Christopher, looking down at Anne, "that you wanted this but tell me precisely why."
He walked away, swinging his dinner pail, down across the meadow to the lower woods, and Raven, after the fringe of birches had closed upon him, hurried off to the hut. He did not expect to find her. The pail in Tenney's hand was sufficient evidence, even if the man's going to his work were not.
Serious offences, such as insubordination and gross disobedience, were punished by a flogging with two birches, which was too severe a punishment.
So the four started running down the hill, while the rest of the Wind Creatures flew off over their heads. Wild Star and his comrade ran faster and faster, until Eric wondered how it was that he and Ivra were ever keeping up with them. Soon he realized that his feet were scarcely touching the ground. At the foot of the hill stood a little group of birches, and they were running right upon it.
Grace wandered among the budding trees, and through the soft springy turf that was growing green again in spite of the bitter spring winds, but she found no little native lurking among the birches, and was disappointed to come to the other side of the wood much more quickly than she expected, without the détour being of any practical use.
But we may, perhaps, take a somewhat wider view of this woodland deity and look upon him as the tutelary genius of all the young life of the forest the callow broods of birds, the litters of foxes and squirrels, and the sapling oaks, hazels, and birches.
In the distance are two or three primitive saw-mills, run by water-power, with a wheel to move the saw, as well as a wheel to move the beam or the tree; and seen from a little distance, the chapel, saw-mills, houses, and cabins, all seem to be enveloped in a soft olive haze that emanates from the dark-green firs and the paler birches which either singly or in groups extend from the winding banks of the Maan to the crests of the lofty mountains.
At all the Flower Shows I have seen in England and France, I have never beheld a bouquet so glorious and beautiful as a little islet in a small pellucid lake in Maine, filled to the brim, and rounded up like a full-blown rose, with firs, larches, white birches and soft maples, with a little sprinkling of the sumach.
Especially did he make her tell him of the New England winter; of the long pauses of its snow-bound life; its whirling winds and drifts; its snapping, crackling frosts; the lonely farms, and the deep sleigh-tracks amid the white wilderness, that still in the winter silence bind these homesteads to each other and the nation; the strange gleams of moonrise and sunset on the cold hills; the strong dark armies of the pines; the grace of the stripped birches.
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