“Come, Mouse!” said she, rousing herself from a reverie a moment later.  “Get on your hat!  You and I have to go to market!”

The morning wore on; it was like a thousand other happy mornings.  Julia and Anna loitered in the cool odorous fish stalls at the market, welcomed asparagus back to its place in the pleasant cycle of the year’s events, inspected glowing oranges and damp crisp heads of lettuce; stopped at the hardware store for Aunt May’s new meat chopper, stopped at the stationer’s for Anna’s St. Nicholas, stopped at the florist’s to breathe deep breaths of the damp fragrant air, and to get some buttercups for Grandma.

Julia’s mother was in the kitchen when she and Anna got home, her dark hair still damp from brushing, her thin wrists no whiter than her snowy ruffles.  Presently they all moved into the dining-room, where Geraldine’s sewing machine was temporarily established, and where Anna’s blocks had a corner to themselves.  The invalid, between intervals of knitting, watched them all with her luminous and sympathetic smile.

“A letter for you, Julie, and four for me,” said the bride-elect, coming back from the door after the postman’s ring.

“Four for you—­Gerry!  You lucky thing!”

“Well—­two are from Morgan,” admitted Geraldine, smiling, and there was a laugh as Julia opened her own letter.

“It’s from Dr. Richard Toland,” she announced a moment later.  “He says Mill Valley is too beautiful for words just now.  How’d you like to go over and see Uncle Richie to-morrow, Anna?”

“I’d love it,” said Anna unhesitatingly.

“We’ve not been for weeks,” Julia said, “I’d love it, too, if my Marmer doesn’t mind?” She turned her bright smile to her mother.  “Regina says she has an engagement with the O’Briens for Sunday,” said she, “and if Gerry goes off with Morgan, will that leave things too quiet?”

“Indeed it won’t!” said Mrs. Torney, looking up from the tissue-paper pattern over which she had hung in profound bewilderment for almost half an hour.  “Rita may bring some of the children in, or Lloyd and Elmer may come over.  Go along with you!”

Richie, much stronger in these days, and without his crutch, though still limping a little, met Julia and the dancing Anna on the following afternoon, and the three crossed the ferry together.  It was a day bursting with summer’s promise, the air was pure and warm, and the sky cloudless.  Getting out of the train at Mill Valley, Julia drew an ecstatic breath.

“Oh, Richie, what heavenly freshness!  Doesn’t it just smooth your forehead down like a cool hand!”

There was a poignant sweetness to the mountain air, washed clear by the late rains, and warmed and invigorated by the sunshine of the lengthening March day.  The country roads were dark and muddy and churned by wheel tracks, but fringed with emerald grass.  Even at four o’clock the little valley was plunged in early shadow, but sunshine lay still upon the hills that framed it, and long lines of light threw the grim heights of Tamalpais into bold relief.  The watching tiers of the redwoods looked refreshed, their spreading dark fans were tipped with the jade-green sprays of the year’s new growth.  The first pale smoke of wild lilac bloom lay over the hills.