There was a cold wind abroad, roaring through the branches of the budding trees, and tossing the red maple blossoms in a riotous blur of color against the brilliant blue and white of the sky. To Jimmy Preston trudging along the uneven sidewalk, where tiny pools of water from the morning’s rain reflected the sky and the tossing trees, like fragments of a broken mirror, came a sense of singular elation. It was his birthday; in one hand he carried the beautiful sparkling card, and in the other the tin pail containing the molasses; while in the dazzling reflections under foot were infinite heights—infinite depths of mysterious rapture.
“If I sh’d step in,” mused Jimmy, carefully skirting the edges of a shallow uneven pool in the worn stones, “‘s like’s not I’d go clear through to heaven.”
Heaven was a wonderful place, all flowers and music and joyous ease. He knew this, because Barbara had told him so; and nearly all of the family were there—all but Barbara and himself. But there might not be popcorn balls in heaven; Jimmy couldn’t be certain on that point; and, anyway, he concluded it was better to stay where Barbara was and grow up to be a man as soon as possible.
The little boy broke into a manly whistle as he pictured himself in a gray flannel shirt with his trousers tucked into large boots, ploughing and calling to the horses, the way Peg Morrison did.
The sidewalk came to an end presently, together with the village street, just opposite the big house of the Honorable Stephen Jarvis. Jimmy stopped, as he always did, to look in through the convolutions of a highly ornamental fence at the cast-iron deer which guarded the walk on either side, and at the mysterious blue glass balls mounted on pedestals, which glistened brightly in a passing gleam of sunshine. There were other things of interest in the yard of the big house: groups of yellow daffodils, nodding gaily in the wind, red, white, and purple hyacinths behind the borders of blue-starred periwinkle, and shrubs with clouds of pink and yellow blossoms. In the summer there would be red geraniums and flaming cannas and pampas grass in tall fleecy pyramids. Jimmy wondered what it would be like to walk up the long smooth gravel path and open the tall front door. What splendors might be hid behind the lace curtains looped away from the shining windows; books, maybe, with pictures; a real piano with ivory keys, and chairs and sofas of red velvet.