I scrubbed my hands and face at the kitchen sink in a tin basin which recalled my childhood, took a long draught from the tin dipper, filled my pipe, and strolled down through the budding orchard toward the brook. The song sparrow was still singing. The cloud ships were still riding at anchor. Even with my pipe in my mouth I could smell the odour of moist places in May. Walking beside the brook, I suddenly found the green spears of an iris plant amid the grasses. A few steps farther on, under the maples, the ground was blue and white with violets and anemones. Then the brook entered the pines, lisping a secret as it went, and I followed it into their cool hush. I had gone scarcely six paces when I heard the crackle of footsteps on dead twigs somewhere ahead of me, and a moment later the vague form of a woman was visible making her way amid the impeding dead branches. I stood still. She did not see me till she was close up. Then she gave a slight start and said, "I beg your pardon. I trust I am not trespassing." I looked at her, while my pipe bowl was hot in my calloused hand. She was scarce more than a girl, I fancied, pale and unmistakably not of this country world. I cannot say how she was dressed, save that she wore no hat and looked white and cool. But I saw that she had very blue eyes on each side of a decidedly tilted nose, and these eyes were unmistakably the kind which twinkle. "Trespassing is a relative term," said I, after this, I fear, rather rudely prolonged scrutiny. "You talk like 'Hill's Rhetoric,'" she smiled, with a quick glance at the incongruity of my clothes. "Naturally," I replied. "It was the text-book I formerly used with my classes." There was a little upward gurgle of laughter from the girl. "Clearness, force, and elegance, wasn't that the great triumvirate?" she said. "Something like that, I believe," said I. "I am trying to forget." "And are these pines yours to forget in? It should be easy. I was walking out there in the road, and I spied the brook over the wall and climbed through the briers to walk beside it, because it was trying so hard to talk to me. That was wrong of me, perhaps, but I never could resist a brook--nor pine trees. They are such nice old men." "Why, then," I asked, "are the little virgin birches always running away from them?" Her eyes contracted a second, and then twinkled. "The birches _plague_ them," she replied. "How do they plague them?" I demanded. "Pull their pine needles when they are asleep, of course," she answered. "Thank you for letting me walk here." "Not at all," said I, "it is always a pleasure to entertain a true naturalist."