Iris reached Paradise Court at five o'clock in the afternoon, after a long and dusty journey. The old sober grey house looked very peaceful and quiet, but all round trees and shrubs and flowers waved their little green hands and seemed to dance rejoicing in their new spring dresses. For it was May time, and the weather, which had hitherto been cold and wet, had suddenly changed, sunshine streamed over the country, and the air was as warm as summer. Everything smelt so sweet, and looked so luxuriant and gay, that Iris felt quite confused and giddy as she stood waiting for the door to be opened; her winter frock and jacket seemed hot and stuffy, and the scent of the great lilac bushes and syringas and hawthorns wrapped her heavily round in a sort of dream. But the door opened and the dream vanished at the appearance of a stiff-looking maid-servant, who scanned the small dusty figure and the shabby box on the top of the cab with equal indifference. "Mrs Fotheringham was walking in the garden," she said. "Would Miss Graham join her there, or would she prefer to go to her room?" In a nervous flurry of shyness Iris replied that she would go to Mrs Fotheringham in the garden, though it was far from what she really wished, and the maid immediately led the way thither. There was no Mrs Fotheringham visible for some time, but presently, turning under a low archway, they entered a small walled garden, and then Iris saw her. She was inspecting her tulips, and was followed by Miss Munnion, and at a little further distance by the gardener. Over her cap she wore a comfortable white woollen hood, and in her hand she carried a stumpy blue umbrella; every now and then she stopped, and pointed out some special favourite with this, or shook it scornfully at something inferior, and in these criticisms Miss Munnion agreed with nods and shakes of the head. A fourth member of the party was the parrot, who, in his brilliant attire of emerald green, touched with glimpses of rose colour, matched the finest tulip there. Taking his pleasure after his own manner, he waddled along the turf border, turning in his crooked toes, and screwing his head sideways at intervals to look at the sky. Sometimes he stopped to tweak some tender stalk with his hooked beak, and sometimes he took a sudden and vicious little run at a sparrow or some other bird at a distance; when it flew away he flapped his wings and gave an exulting squawk. Mrs Fotheringham came to a stand-still as Iris advanced, planted the blue umbrella firmly on the ground, and surveyed her gravely from top to toe. The old lady, with her high-bridged nose, was certainly a little like the parrot in the face, and though her eye had not the changing brilliancy of the bird's, it was quite its equal in the unblinking fixity of its gaze.