Most of his time, said Mrs. Clemm, was passed out of doors. He did not like the loneliness of the house, and would not remain alone in the room in which Virginia had died. When he chose to write at night, as was sometimes the case, and was particularly absorbed in his subject, he would have his devoted mother-in-law sit beside him, "dozing in her chair" and at intervals supplying him with hot coffee, or Catalina, his wife's old pet, perched upon his knee or shoulder, cheering him with her gentle purring. Virginia's death seemed to have drawn these three more closely together. They could thenceforth often be seen walking up and down the garden-walk, Poe and his mother, arm-in-arm, or with their arms about each other's waists, and Catalina staidly keeping pace with them, rubbing and purring. Mrs. Clemm told Stoddard how, when Poe was about this time writing "_Eureka_," he would walk at night up and down the veranda explaining his views and dragging her along with him, "until her teeth chattered and she was nearly frozen." It is to be feared that he was not always sufficiently considerate of his indulgent mother-in-law. Poe soon experienced the benefits of his restful and temperate life. Health and spirits improved, and he began to take an interest in the everyday things about him. As spring advanced, he and Mrs. Clemm laid out some flower beds in the front garden and planted them with flowers and vines given by the neighbors, until when in May the cherry tree again blossomed the little abode assumed quite an attractive appearance. Upon an old "settle" left by a former tenant, and which Mrs. Clemm's skillful hands had mended and scrubbed and stained into respectability and placed beneath the cherry tree as a garden-seat, Poe might now often be seen reclining; gazing up into the branches, where birds and bees flitted in and out, or talking and whistling to his own pets, a parrot and bobolink, whose cages hung in the branches. A passer-by was impressed by the picture presented quite early one summer morning of the poet and his mother standing together on the green turf, smilingly looking up and talking to these pets. Here, on the convenient _settle_, on returning from one of his long sunrise rambles, he would rest until summoned by his mother to his frugal breakfast.