n the fields were
lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue,--the landscape like
a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus,
all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala
were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the
rust-red bloom of the ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were
clouds of bluets, wild violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering
beside the star moss all a-shimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower
spread a carpet under the pines; and in the hollows where the mists
settled, where the brooks flowed, where the air was heavy with the
damp, ineffable odour of growing things, they gathered drooping
adder's-tongues, white-starred bloodroots and foam-flowers. From
Insall's quick eye nothing seemed to escape. He would point out to them
the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur, above the columbine, the
woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high above their heads, the red
gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit foliage, the oriole and vireo
where they hid. And his was the ear that first caught the exquisite,
distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped them, startled, to listen to
the cock partridge drumming to its mate....

Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her
planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of
his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs.
Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow
it.

"Now, Brooks," she would say, "you've just got to suggest something to
put in that border to replace the hyacinths."

"I had larkspur last year--you remember--and it looked like a chromo in
a railroad folder."

"Let me see--did I advise larkspur?" he would ask.

"Oh, I'm sure you must have--I always do what you tell me. It seems to
me I've thought of every possible flower in the catalogue. You know,
too, only you're so afraid of committing yourself."

Insall's comic spirit, betrayed by his expressions, by the quizzical
intonations of his voice, never failed to fill Janet with joy, while
it was somehow suggestive, too, of the vast fund of his resource. Mrs.
Maturin was right, he could have solved many of her questions offhand if
he had so wished, but he had his own method of dealing with appeals. His
head tilted on one side, apparently in deep thought over the problem, he
never answered outright, but by som