"I
wonder if he affects others as he does me," she thought. "Papa used to
say, when I was a little thing, that I was just a bundle of nerves, but
when Webb is near I am not conscious I ever had a nerve."
Every little brook had become a torrent; Moodna Creek was reported to be
in angry mood, and the family hastened through breakfast that they might
drive out to see the floods and the possible devastation. Several bridges
over the smaller streams had barely escaped, and the Idlewild brook,
whose spring and summer music the poet Willis had caused to be heard even
in other lands, now gave forth a hoarse roar from the deep glen through
which it raved. An iron bridge over the Moodna, on the depot road, had
evidently been in danger in the night. The ice had been piled up in the
road at each end of the bridge, and a cottage a little above it was
surrounded by huge cakes. The inmates had realized their danger, for part
of their furniture had been carried to higher ground. Although the volume
of water passing was still immense, all danger was now over. As they were
looking at the evidences of the violent breaking up of winter, the first
phoebe-bird of the season alighted in a tree overhanging the torrent, and
in her plaintive notes seemed to say, as interpreted by John Burroughs,
"If you please, spring has come." They gave the brown little harbinger
such an enthusiastic welcome that she speedily took flight to the further
shore.
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