In an hour, after several false starts, Brooke had compassed the grouping and outline, though there was one curve in the neck of the young horse that displeased her. Hearing the pieman’s whistle out on the road, and remembering that this was the day when she was to accompany him on his route to “Sister-in-law Sairy Ann’s,” and knowing that Maarten would naturally have gone home to his dinner,—for he never brought it in a pail like other labourers, her informant being Enoch Fenton, who said he table-boarded at the best place in Gilead, and paid six dollars a week, and most likely had a big head,—she was demurring as to how she should get the sign back, for to leave it might tempt the cows to lick the chalk off. At this point she became conscious, through one of those swift half glances that tell so many tales, that Maarten was waiting a little beyond, and not only waiting, but watching her eagerly. Therefore, taking advantage of the circumstance, she laughingly apologized for asking two favours in one day, but would he carry the sign back to the little harness room, long disused, with a door of its own on the pasture side of the barn, where the sign could be kept free from hay dust?—adding, half aloud, as she took a final look at her work, “There is something wrong about the line of old Billy’s neck; it could not possibly twist like that.” Point of view frequently has as much to do with our estimate of a thing as the value of the thing itself. Therefore Brooke’s progress of fifteen miles through the hill country in the pieman’s wagon brought her in touch with an entirely different side of the world of the woods than if she had driven over the same way with a party of guests who chattered inconsequently, or gone on horseback in the company of Stead, as she had done once or twice lately, for even the mild-mannered old horse required guiding and attention that banished the spirit of revery. The pieman had covered his wares carefully, and rolled up the curtains all around, while the horse, dragging the loaded cart, proceeded perforce at a walk, so that Brooke, seated on a low chair, travelled with all the leisurely ease of an old-time queen in a palanquin. This pace brought her close to every feature of the Masque of Spring, face to face with the reality of it, and she could anticipate, and then realize, every detail in its fulness.