_Spread._ I don’t like a tree before a window, it checks the current of fresh air--don’t you find that? _Jen._ It _does_ check the current of fresh air. _Spread._ Then the leaves blow into the house in autumn, and that’s a nuisance--and besides, it impedes the view. _Jen._ It is certainly open to these objections. _Spread._ Then cut it down, my dear Jane. Why don’t you cut it down? _Jen._ Cut it down! I wouldn’t cut it down for worlds. That tree is identified in my mind with many happy recollections. _Spread._ Remarkable the influence exercised by associations over a woman’s mind. Observe--you take a house, mainly because it commands a beautiful view. You apportion the rooms principally with reference to that view. You lay out your garden at great expense to harmonize with that view, and, having brought that view into the very best of all possible conditions for the full enjoyment of it, you allow a gigantic and wholly irrelevant tree to block it all out for the sake of the sentimental ghost of some dead and gone sentimental reality! Take my advice and have it down. If I had had anything to do with it, you would never have planted it. I shouldn’t have allowed it! _Jen._ You had so much to do with it that it was planted there at your suggestion. _Spread._ At mine? Never saw it before in my life. _Jen._ We planted it together thirty years ago--the day you sailed for India. _Spread._ It appears to me that that was a very eventful day in my career. We planted it together! I have no recollection of having ever planted a gigantic sycamore anywhere. And we did it together! Why, it would take a dozen men to move it. _Jen._ It was a sapling then--you cut it for me. _Spread._ (_suddenly and with energy_). From the old sycamore in the old garden at Hampstead! Why, I remember; I went to London expressly to get it for you. (_Laughing--sitting on her left._) And the next day I called to say good-bye, and I found you planting it, and I helped; and as I was helping I found an opportunity to seize your hand. (_Does so._) I grasped it--pressed it to my lips--(_does so_), and said, “My dear, dear Jenny” (_he drops her hand suddenly_), and so forth. Never mind _what_ I said--but I meant it--I meant it! (_Laughs heartily--she joins him, but her laughter is evidently forced--eventually she shows signs of tears, which he doesn’t notice._) It all comes back with a distinctness which is absolutely photographic. I begged you to give me a flower--you gave me one--a sprig of geranium. _Jen._ Mignonette.