296 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



sweet promise of the spring which is already 

 pulsing in the subsoil. 



It was not a big storm, in my woods, after all. 

 It lasted less than twenty-four hours and hardly 

 six inches of light snow fell. Proverbs are half- 

 truths, anyway, and ^'long foretold, long last" has 

 proved less than half of itself this time. But 

 though the day is clear and the sun bright, Aunt 

 Sue's snowbank is lifting its purple mass in the 

 southeast again and, with the other Dorchester 

 backwoodsmen, I am wagging my head solemnly 

 and joining in a jeremiad concerning a big one 

 next time. I should like to have known Aunt 

 Sue. I picture her as a stout, keen-eyed, wise- 

 headed house-mother of the old English stock. 

 Surely she is the patron saint of the young pines 

 and of all others who know how to enjoy a good 

 old-fashioned winter. As such I hope someone 

 will paint her, seated on a good big snowbank, 

 attended by cupid pines robed in such ermine as 

 they now wear, and with the soft radiance of 

 a snow rainbow around her head for an aureole. 



