For twenty minutes or more there was no sound in the House of Odell except the flutter of muslin curtains. Under the window a lilac bush was vibrant with bumble-bees; robins ran through the grass; blue-birds drifted along the fence from post to post in soft, moth-like flight. It was quite a while after the kitchen clock struck that light, hurried steps sounded on the stairs. Eris stepped out on the porch, radiant and in her best. At twenty she had the slender immaturity of a girl of sixteen. Her slim figure made her seem taller than she was. Her hat was one of those sagging straw affairs. It tied under the chin with lilac ribbon. Her thin white gown had lilac ribbons on it, too. So did her sun-shade. She was very late. She walked to the gate, keeping to the brick path on account of her white shoes and stockings. Here she consulted her wrist-watch. There was no use hurrying now. She glanced up and down the road--possibility of a belated neighbour giving her a lift to the village. No, it was too late to hurry. Almost too late to go at all. She looked up at the gate lilacs, broke off a heavy, mauve cluster, inhaled the fragrance. For a little while, still, she lingered on the chance of a passing vehicle. Finally she returned to her room, took a book from her pillow, took “the key to the fields,” and sauntered off through the hillside orchard, now a wilderness of pink and white bloom. Everywhere the azure wings of blue-birds; the peach-red of a robin’s breast; the broad golden glint of a flicker flashing through high white bloom. The breeze which had fluttered her muslin curtains was busy up here, too, blowing white butterflies out of their courses and spreading silvery streaks across tall grasses. On the hill-top she paused, looking out over the world of May. Below her lay Whitewater Farms, neat as a group of newly-painted toys, house, barns with their hip-gables, silos, poultry-runs, sheds, out-buildings, whitewashed fences. A mile south, buried among elms and maples, lay White Hills Village, the spires of its three churches piercing the foliage. All around, east, west, south, rose low hills, patched with woods, a barn or two in silhouette on some grassy ridge. Ploughed fields, pastures, squares of vivid winter wheat checkered the panorama, the tender green of hard-wood groves alternating with the dark beauty of hemlock and white pine. Overhead a blue sky, quite cloudless; over all, May sunshine; the young world melodious with the songs of birds. And Eris, twenty, with the heart and experience of sixteen. Sweet, thrilling came the meadow lark’s calling from the crests of tall elms. It seemed to pierce her heart. To the breezy stillness of the hill came faintly out of the valley the distant barking of a dog, a cock-crow, answered, answered again from some remoter farm. Eris turned and looked into the north, where bluish hills spread away into the unknown.