The soil was almost bare here in the grove, brown and bleak, but the sun on the rocks was warm—fair-weather clouds drifted high up in the silky blue sky. But the bay, of which she could see a glimpse between the naked white birch-trunks, was still covered with rotten, thawing ice, and on the far shore the snow still glared white among the woods, right down to the beach. Here on the sunny side there was a trickling and gurgling of water everywhere, but the thaw had not yet given its full roar to the voice of spring.
