Some peach-trees in the back yard of the Zane House hastened to
put on their pink scarves and bonnets, and the boys said that an old
sucker of Penn's Treaty Elm down in a ship-yard was fresh and blithsome
as a second wife. In the hearts and views of living people, too, spring
brought a budding of youthfulness and a gush of sap. Duff Salter
acknowledged it as he looked in Podge Byerly's blue eyes and felt her
hands as they wrapped his scarf around him, or buttoned his gloves.
Whispering, and without the tablets this time, he articulated:
"Happy for you, Mischief, that I am not young as these trees!"
"We'll have you set out!" screamed Podge, "like a piece of hale old
willow, and you'll grow again!"
Duff Salter frequently walked almost to her school with Podge Byerly,
which was far down in the old city. They seldom took the general cut
through Maiden and Laurel Streets to Second, but kept down the river
bank by Beach Street, to see the ship-yards and hear the pounding of
rivets and the merry adzes ringing, and see youngsters and old women
gathering chips, while the sails on the broad river came up on wind and
tide as if to shatter the pier-heads ere they bounded off.
In the afternoons Duff Salter sometimes called on Rev. Silas Van de
Lear, who had great expectations that Duff would build them a
much-required new church, with the highest spire in Kensington.
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