hard-rolled winding avenue lined
with hemlocks. "Pretty, isn't it?" cried he. "O for the time when I
shall retire upon my fortune, and leave my office to Phil the second!
There, Katy! What do you think of that?"

What did I think? O, too much to be told, either then or now! From the
dark trees one forward step of each of De Quincey's forefeet brought us
out into a high amphitheatre, at the instant flooded with sunshine. A
higher hill, wooded with evergreens and bossed with boulders, made a
background behind it, on the right, for a large, low cottage of clear
gray granite, with broad piazzas curtained with Virginia creepers and
monthly honeysuckles, and cloistered on the south. In front of the
cottage was a shaven lawn, rimmed with a hedge of graceful barberries,
and lighted up by small circular spots of brown earth, teeming with
salvia and other splendid autumn flowers. Beyond and on the left ran a
long reach of rocky headlands, burning with golden-rod and wild-rose
berries mingled with purple asters and white spiraea, and all along from
below, but very near, spread out far and wide the inexpressible ocean.
It was a rough, ridgy, sage-greenish, gray ocean, I remember, that
morning, full of tumble and toss and long scalloped lines of spent foam,
covered over with a dim, low half-dome of sky,--with seagulls
flickering, and here and there a small, wild, ragged gypsy of a cloud,
of a little darker gray, scudding lawlessly under,--and threw out in the
strongest contrast the brilliant hues and sharp, clear outlines of the
shore.

The Doctor sprang from the chaise, left me in it, and threw me the
reins. I always wished he wouldn't, but he always would. The most I had
to gain by pulling them, if De Quincey grew restless, was to make him
_back_; and this was precisely what I least desired. My reasonable
expostulations, however, could never obtain any more grace from him who
should have been my guardian than a promise, if I would "make no fuss,
and broken bones" came of it, that he would "mend me softly." Therefore
I thought it most prudent not to expostulate; but my penance was this
time a brief one. He had hardly entered the door when the tall, striking
figure I recollected so well came dimly in view in one of the nearest
bay-windows, tapped on the glass with one slender white-frilled hand,
and nodded with a bright, glad smile; and back came the Doctor to help
me out.

"It is all right, Katy. Miss Dudley wants you, and does