They are long and fickle and reluctant , these springs of ours , but , oh , the unnamable charm of them ! There was something even in the red buds of the maples at Sweetwater and in the long , smoking stretches of hillside fields that sent a thrill through my veins , finer and subtler than any given by old wine . A week after my arrival , when we had got the larger affairs pretty well straightened out , Aunt Mary suggested that I had better overhaul Uncle Alan 's room . `` The things there have never been meddled with since he died , '' she said . `` In particular , there 's an old trunk full of his letters and his papers . It was brought home from California after his death . I 've never examined them . I do n't suppose there is anything of any importance among them . But I 'm not going to carry all that old rubbish to town . So I wish you would look over them and see if there is anything that should be kept . The rest may be burned . '' I felt no particular interest in the task . My Uncle Alan Blair was a mere name to me . He was my mother 's eldest brother and had died years before I was born . I had heard that he had been very clever and that great things had been expected of him . But I anticipated no pleasure from exploring musty old letters and papers of forty neglected years . I went up to Uncle Alan 's room at dusk that night . We had been having a day of warm spring rain , but it had cleared away and the bare maple boughs outside the window were strung with glistening drops . The room looked to the north and was always dim by reason of the close-growing Sweetwater pines . A gap had been cut through them to the northwest , and in it I had a glimpse of the sea Uncle Alan had loved , and above it a wondrous sunset sky fleeced over with little clouds , pale and pink and golden and green , that suddenly reminded me of Miss Sylvia and her fluffy knitting .
It was XXXXX the thought of her in my mind that I lighted a lamp and began the task of grubbing into Uncle Alan 's trunkful of papers .
So after among at before by from in over with