the rows of elms the
lineaments of those old houses rose before her, lineaments seemingly long
familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and yet ever stirring new
harmonies and new visions. Here, in their midst, she belonged, and here,
had the world been otherwise ordained, she might have lived on in one
continuous, shining spring. At the corner of the Common, foursquare,
ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white, with its high chimneys
and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded terrace porch open to the
sky, was the eighteenth century mansion occupied by Dr. Ledyard. What was
the secret of its flavour? And how account for the sense of harmony
inspired by another dwelling, built during the term of the second Adams,
set in a frame of maples and shining white in the morning sun? Its curved
portico was capped by a wrought-iron railing, its long windows were
touched with purple, and its low garret--set like a deckhouse on the wide
roof--suggested hidden secrets of the past. Here a Motley or a Longfellow
might have dwelt, a Bryant penned his "Thanatopsis." Farther on,
chequered by shade, stood the quaint brick row of professors' houses,
with sloping eaves and recessed entrances of granite--a subject for an
old English print.... Along the border of the Common were interspersed
among the ancient dormitories and halls the new and dignified buildings
of plum-coloured brick that still preserved the soul of Silliston. And to
it the soul of Janet responded.

In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross
the Common to Mrs. Maturin's--a dwelling typical of the New England of
the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity
of a mansion. Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows
were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the
classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high
clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you
reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival
colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is one
glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and
another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster.

Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs. Maturin
and Janet on long walks into the country. There were afternoons when the
world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the
sun; and after