on had already been put back for Jack's return, and now
here we were proposing to go off without it! Yet no, not exactly without
it. What could be taken with us we took in a basket: for man must eat
and woman must at least nibble.

While I'd been giving hasty but apologetic orders, Pat had darted away
in search of Angele, who might, she imagined, be useful in a
servantless house. I don't know how much Angele had heard or understood,
but when she appeared with fire in her eye and crumbs on her lip, I
thought she looked dangerous.

We didn't say much on the way to Kidd's Pines; but inside the gates,
though my heart was oppressed, I broke into admiring exclamations. My
dear, there's nothing lovelier in Italy or in England! I group those two
countries together in my comparison because Kidd's Pines has salient
features which suggest both. The general effect of the lawns and gardens
round the exquisite old house is English, or would be, if they were
better kept. The tall drooping elm trees and occasional willows are
vaguely English, too: but the grove of umbrella pine trees crowding
darkly together on a promontory like a band of conspirators might be
etched against the sky at some seaside chateau of Posilippo. I'm
beginning to find out that this combined English-ness and Italian-ness
is characteristic of Long Island, where I am even a greater stranger
than Patricia Moore. And yet the most winning charm, the charm which
seems to link all other charms together, is the American-ness of
everything--oh, an utterly different American-ness from what most people
mean when they say "how American that is!" I do wish I could explain
clearly; but to explain a thing so delicate, so illusive, would be like
taking a soap-bubble in your hand to demonstrate that it was round. It's
an effect of imagination and climate: imagination which gave graceful
lightness and simplicity to Georgian models; climate which has played
Puck-tricks with elms and other stately trees of England, turning them
into fairy trees while leaving the family resemblance. Why, there's
something different even about the paint on those dear old frame houses
in the country over here! In no other part of the world, not even in
Italy, where colour is so important, could there be a yellow like the
yellow paint on the ancient shingled house-front at Kidd's Pines. I
suppose the white window-facings and doorway and pillars, and the green
blinds, and the frame of cathedral elms, pa