The talk passed into a discussion of clothes, and drifted about that interesting topic till time for them to go home. They found their house empty, except for the servants. Cousin Jason had gone, as he said, without eating again beneath his sister’s roof. * * * * * _June 16th._ I suppose the excitement of Cousin Jason’s deposition was a little too much for me: I’ve been curled up dead-’possum-fashion for a week. Now I’m uncurling again, and showing that, like the ’possum, I’m not so dead as I look. Caro came back, whether or no, and took charge of me. It is a great comfort to have her. * * * * * _June 19th._ A slow pull and a hard one. But I make it, inch by inch. * * * * * _June 21st._ Courage, patience and laughter—life would be impossible without them. Yet the first necessity, and the last, is love. If one only loves enough, one can fight anything, and fight always, while breath and consciousness last. * * * * * _June 24th._ _WHEN WINGS GO BY_ _A flash of wings across my window-pane!_ _Fallen these narrow walls; and sky-arched plain,_ _Fern-haunted pool, white foam of summer seas,_ _Blue, dawn-steeped mountains, dusk of forest trees—_ _All things free wings may seek, or near or far—_ _Sweep round this bed, where pain and stillness are._ _A prisoned life? When any moment brings_ _A far horizon, and the sense of wings?_ XI WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT _July 7th._ I have seen the woods in summer time again! It was winter when I left home for those three years, and winter when I went back; and, though one does not think of the country passed in a winter journey as dead—for the winter’s story of life reserved is as vivid as the summer one of life out-poured—yet one longs to see, far out-spread in breeze and sunshine, the close-shut life of the winter buds. As soon as the doctor would allow it, the Peon and Caro brought me here. We came through the mountains nearly all the way—one long splendor of rhododendrons, wild phlox, azaleas, laurel, and briar rose, all in glorious bloom; and above them the green billows of the trees, with great masses of chestnut blooms for foam. And everywhere the mountains themselves, green and dark near at hand, and blue and faint in the distance; and between them the valleys, heaped with beauty and over-flowing with life.