She threw back her head and looked up. In front of the steps two lines of very old elm trees marked the limits of a walk leading through the "back yard" to the vegetable garden. On each row, planted opposite, white wistaria had been trained so carefully that as the lower lateral elm branches were cut away to keep the arch intact, the vines climbed higher until now, the top boughs of the trees having met, all along the walls and across the pale-green dome of elm leaves swung long, drooping spikes of snowy bloom, amid the olive-tinted wistaria foliage. "I never saw anything so lovely in Italy," said Eliza, stroking Delilah, and straightening the blue bow on the cat's neck. "We came too late last spring for the bloom, and we have not seen this living ceiling for so many years. When I was at college I used to shut my eyes and recall it just as we left it. My little 'sundown supper' table on the square of matting yonder, you sitting on the bottom step crocheting mats, grandmother, so tall and thin, walking up and down the side flower garden over there, gathering rose leaves for the big blue china rose jar in the drawing-room, old Hector following her like a lean shadow, and King Herod spreading his tail till I threw him bread crumbs. How often I longed for one of my 'sundown' suppers--my bowl of hominy and cream, my cup of milk, the tea cakes and ginger pone, and blackberry jam. The smell of cloves and cinnamon, and the taste thereof!" Watching her face, relaxed in dreamy retrospection, Mrs. Mitchell asked: "Where is Mr. Herriott?" Without removing her eyes from the long wistaria plumes waving overhead, she answered in a colder tone: "When father heard last, he was in Norway, but since then I read an account of a dinner given to the party of which he was a member, by a geographical society in London." "You have received no letter?" "None recently, and I do not expect any." "Because you do not deserve any. I am so disappointed in him." "In what respect? I imagined that in your eyes, as in father's, he was simply perfect." "He is capable of something far better than lounging through life with his hands in his pockets, and loafing around the world. If he could only have the good luck to lose his money, he might accomplish what God makes such men for." "He is not an idle tramp. He is kept busy dancing attendance on his exacting bride." "Bride!" exclaimed Mrs. Mitchell, with such startling shrillness that Delilah sprang out of her lap and surveyed her with astonishment.