It was a day of days. Not warm; one was not ready for warmth yet; but every breath was a delight, the air so tingled with wakening life. Kitty walked not five miles, but ten, if she had known it. She took no count of miles, swinging along over hill and dale, her quick eyes taking in every sign of promise; here a catkin waving, there a little host of green spears pushing up through the brown earth. She sat on a huge silvered root in a stump fence to eat her luncheon. A chipmunk came to make inquiries and received crumbs; a bluebird sang in a cherry tree near by. It was a delightful feast. This was on top of the Great Hill, from which one saw all the kingdoms of the earth, more or less. Kitty saw and rejoiced in all: the kingdom of pines, stretching dark and velvety along its waving miles; the kingdom of hills, bare and ruddy in the sunlight; the kingdom of streams and ponds, a great necklace of sapphires flung across the countryside. Kitty saw, and sighed with delight; then slipped her empty box in her pocket and set her face homeward. Already the sunbeams came slanting through the pines on the crest; she had a long way to go. "And I must and will go back through Lancaston Woods!" said Kitty. "Perhaps I'll make a call on Savory Bite; similarly, perhaps I won't. I wonder if his paint is blue still. Naughty Tom!" Down the hillside went Kitty, across lots; through steep pastures of slippery russet grass, where the huddled rocks looked like flocks of gray sheep, browsing; through hanging copses, the outlying pickets of the kingdom of pines; so down at last to the kingdom itself, the long stretch of woodland, bordered on one side by the river, on the other by that shy, pleasant thoroughfare known as Lancaston Road. It was near the edge of the road that Kitty was wandering happily along, about five o'clock, when she should have been nearer home; it was here that she found the first anemone. She was bending over it in rapture, when she heard a name pronounced; not her own name, but a perversion of it to which she was now only too well accustomed. "Katrine!" cried Wilson Wibird. "Can it be? Fate is kind for once!" Wilson had been to Tinkham: I fear on no profitable errand. He was on his homeward way, walking with a rather uncertain step, wavering from side to side of the road. Catching sight of a figure through the trees, his half-tipsy fancy prompted him to see who it was. Here he was now, balancing himself on unsteady feet, leering at Kitty in a way which he felt to be irresistible. Wilson's nose had long since resumed its normal appearance. He had by a happy inspiration put on his good suit; a necktie of undeniable brilliancy flaunted beneath the high collar which partly sheltered his long bird-like neck. He felt that the occasion was a fortunate one. "Well met by sunlight, proud Titania!" was his greeting to Kitty. "How d'ye do, Wilson!" Kitty nodded, and stepped past him toward the open: he, however, stepped with her.