It was a little house built by the side of a river, actually touching the water on one side, so that you could step out of a door, down a step, and into a rowboat. And there were white swans and yellow-breasted ducks with bronze-green backs swimming in the reflection of the pink walls. On the land side was a poplar tree, very tall and dressed in silvery blue leaves, standing erect like a giant soldier on guard before a toy house. Once Philippe’s Grandfather had explained to him how he could tell the time of day by the shadow this tree cast: when it struck across the chimney at the corner of the house, it was time to go into the fields; when it crossed the front door, it was time to enter therein for the midday meal, and when it pointed out toward the fields, that was a signal for Grandmother to ring the great bell that would call the workers home. “And what,” Philippe had asked, “do you do, Grandfather, when the sun is under the clouds, and there is no shadow to tell the time?” “Well, then we must needs look at the clock which ticks on the mantelshelf over the fire,” Grandfather said with a twinkle of his old, blue eyes, eyes half hidden by the tufts of white eyebrows. Although the day had commenced unusually fine, and the calm, blue sea of sky had been without an island reef or bar of cloud to wreck the golden galleon of the sun, by the time Philippe had been tubbed, scrubbed, dressed in his best, had been rehearsed in his address to his uncle, kissed good-by, and given a little nosegay of pansies and lilies of the valley in a paper twist for his Grandmother, and had crossed the twelve fields and picked his way carefully through the woods to avoid the sharp brambles that reached out after him with long and sinuous arms—by the time all this had come to pass, and Philippe was actually in sight of his grandparents’ cottage, it began to rain from a sky as heavily gray as it had been brightly blue before. It started so suddenly that Philippe had to run across the last field to keep the big drops from ruining his new black velvet cap. The inside of the house was very dark, with only two windows, like half-closed eyes, looking out on the world. Through these windows entered shafts of pale, watery light that cut blue paths in the wreaths of wood smoke creeping around the rafters. Pots, pans, and kettles of burnished copper hung from hooks in the ceiling, and mirrored in tiny points the flames leaping on the hearth. It was like another world, small but complete, inside Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s house: the floor was the earth itself, trampled until it was as hard as brick, the wreaths of smoke were thin clouds flung across a dark sky where yellow and red stars winked and twinkled. At one end of the room, where Grandmother and Anjou, the cat, were busy preparing dinner over the bright fire, it was gay and warm: _Day_; but at the farther end, where Grandfather sat stroking his long white beard, it was dark and chilly: _Night_.