“Say, Mis’ Lawton, the tea and spice pedler saw that fox-head sign, settin’ in there in the kitchen, and he says the firm he travels fer are just introducing a new brand of condensed goat’s milk, and if she’d paint out a nice, white, lively-lookin’ goat with a pretty, dressed-up baby sittin’ on its back, and a dreadful thin baby sittin’ on the road a-crying ’cause she didn’t get none, he reckons he could get her all of twenty-five dollars for it—maybe more. There’s a fine big carriage goat boardin’ at Bisbee’s fer the winter that she could copy—’tain’t a milking one, but she might add to it a little. Thought I’d jest mention it; you know ’tain’t often she might get the chance to turn picture paintin’ into something useful and instructive and payin’ all to onct.” At this juncture Brooke appeared to speak for herself, and, after she had cleaned the paint from her fingers with turpentine, the shrewd old farmer and the warm-hearted young enthusiast walked side by side down the cross-road, skirting the hay-field, now growing green around the moist edges. The meadowlarks were soaring and singing, the first white butterflies fluttered in the sun, and down from the garden wafted an odour that tells of spring in every quarter of the globe, the perfume of the little white English violets. These nestled in sociable tufts under the protection of the leafless bushes of crimson and damask roses in the garden that Great-granny West had planted,—violets whose ancestors had doubtless come overseas in company with the Sign of the Fox and the Goose. The unploughed corn-field lay to the right of the cross-road, and to reach it they were obliged to skirt a small field of fall-sown rye that was bounded by the roadway. As they picked their way along the stubbly edge, between which and the stone fence ran one of those little brooks of the hill countries that brawl and rush along in spring and autumn, but shrink away and keep their silence in summer heat and winter cold alike, Brooke paused once or twice to look upon her River Kingdom, which, after the rain and freshet of a week past, was now showing the first real signs of life. Dun and gray were still the prevailing hues of the river woods, except where a ruddy or golden glow lying on the tree-tops told of swamp maples or willows. The hemlocks on the rocky banks looked rusty and winter-worn, not having yet donned their curved-tipped new feathers. The marsh meadows, thickly studded with ponds by the overflow, alone showed solid green, and glittered with the sunlit emerald leaves of the arums, that had now risen above and concealed their ill-smelling mottled red blossoms.