`` There are times in spring when I sorter feel that I might have been a poet if I 'd been caught young , '' remarked Captain Jim . `` I catch myself conning over old lines and verses I heard the schoolmaster reciting sixty years ago . They do n't trouble me at other times . Now I feel as if I had to get out on the rocks or the fields or the water and spout them . '' Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a load of shells for her garden , and a little bunch of sweet-grass which he had found in a ramble over the sand dunes . `` It 's getting real scarce along this shore now , '' he said . `` When I was a boy there was a-plenty of it . But now it 's only once in a while you 'll find a plot -- and never when you 're looking for it . You jest have to stumble on it -- you 're walking along on the sand hills , never thinking of sweet-grass -- and all at once the air is full of sweetness -- and there 's the grass under your feet . I favor the smell of sweet-grass . It always makes me think of my mother . '' `` She was fond of it ? '' asked Anne . `` Not that I knows on . Dunno 's she ever saw any sweet-grass . No , it 's because it has a kind of motherly perfume -- not too young , you understand -- something kind of seasoned and wholesome and dependable -- jest like a mother . The schoolmaster 's bride always kept it among her handkerchiefs . You might put that little bunch among yours , Mistress Blythe . I do n't like these boughten scents -- but a whiff of sweet-grass belongs anywhere a lady does . '' Anne had not been especially enthusiastic over the idea of surrounding her flower beds with quahog shells ; as a decoration they did not appeal to her on first thought .
But she would not have hurt Captain Jim 's feelings for anything ; so she assumed a virtue she did not at XXXXX feel , and thanked him heartily .
Anne Blythe Dunno Jim a-plenty first quahog scents sorter sweet-grass