"You have to be conventional if you're going to be at all happy in the country," Mrs. Greene announced with decision. "I don't mean because of the people, though there's that too, of course. They are much more conventional than in town, and they'd be disappointed and puzzled if one didn't do certain conventional things. But I was thinking of Nature really. You'll find that the land and the woods and the gardens all proceed along the most orderly and conventional lines. Really, Roger, there are no surprises, except that every year I find the first tulips more lovely than I had remembered. But nothing bizarre ever happens. Things either go smoothly and the crops are good and the flowers do well, or else it's warm too early and we get frost in April and everything is nipped; but either way it goes by rote." "Every word you say makes me like it all the more." Roger's face was serious. "You see I'm rather like that myself. I'm dull; I've no surprises." Mrs. Greene attacked him hotly in his own defence. "Really Roger, what nonsense you talk. It's ridiculous to say you're dull. I don't find you so at all, and you very often surprise me. I don't approve of your underrating yourself like that." Roger laughed. "I don't mean to underrate myself, but sometimes I feel I'm a dull dog." "You never need feel that when you're with me, Roger," said Mrs. Greene, struggling to express an emotional fact in an unemotional manner. "You know how fond I am of you, my dear boy, and proud of you too. You touched me very much by what you said at dinner the other night about our friendship. I know it was quite true and genuine, and the more I think of it, the more I am glad to think of you and Mary living here." She stood up abruptly. "Come now, let's go and get out the books; I really have a great deal to tell you." Late that night Sarah Greene drew back the curtains of her bedroom and looked out over the wide lawns to the formally cut box hedge beyond and to the meadows beyond that, sloping steeply up to the solitary woods. A breeze had sprung up dispelling the mist, the heaped-up clouds were hurrying across the dark sky, and the young clear moon was unrimmed. "To-morrow will be a wild and lovely day," she said softly, "Lynton will look its best for Roger." Confident and contented she got into bed and slept till morning, when she wakened to just such a day as she had foretold. White clouds were still hurrying across the sky, but in between it was a deep and steady blue. Leaves were flying over the lawn; a branch had been blown off the lime tree near her window and lay untidily on the path below. Even the solid hedge yielded a little this way and that to the contrary wind.