It was the last of May, and I snuffed delightful odors from the little farm. Nasturtium vines were already running up strings at the window. They produced little pods of which Lena made my favorite pickles. She had one blazing bed of tulips in the garden, and her early vegetables were showing green. Everything Lena tended grew like magic. Fritz had raked every stick and bit of trash into the meadow, and the heap was burning with a pale flicker in the sunlight, and raising smoke like incense from the sod. Whenever I smell that smoke I think I must tell my sensations to somebody who can put them in a poem: a homely poem about last year’s pea-vines and strawberry and currant leaves, exhaling the dew as they turned into blue vapor, and suggesting, though I cannot tell why, the old home garden life when Adam and Eve were content to lean down to the sweet ground and feel the loam with their fingers, or take delight in the breath of fresh-cut grass. The walk up to the porch was of uneven stones, each outlined by moss. Lena arose between two gaping cellar doors at the side of the house, and ambled down the walk to meet us. “Wie befinden, Lena?” said Julian. “Suppose we put off that sale and you take us to live on your prospective estate?” “Was Lena going to buy it?” I exclaimed. “Of course. She’s grown so wealthy off my land that she was going to turn me away entirely.” Lena laughed and shook her head and made gestures of good-will. We went into the house, and Julian bargained with Lena to take us home unto our estate. There was plenty of room for our furniture. Lena had nothing but a spinning-wheel in one long slant-sided room over the wing. Julian said he should leave the spinning-wheel alone, hang his draperies and pictures there, set up his easels, and make it a painting-room. The house had all sorts of tags and after-thoughts built to the main part. Some boards in the floors arched downwards like inverted rainbows. You mounted two steps to one room and descended three to another. There were tall mantles and unexpected closets. The staircase twisted in a way I fancied T’férgore would not like. I sat down on the porch bench while Julian was giving Lena directions, and tried to picture T’férgore coming up the walk toward the house. Was he white or brown? Would he be churlish or full of the spirit of laughter? Was he bringing trouble or gladness to Julian and me? PART II WE PREPARE FOR HIM “So many hours must I take my rest; So many hours must I contemplate; So many hours must I sport myself.” “Ah, what a life were this! how sweet--how lovely! Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds looking on their silly sheep Than doth a rich embroidered canopy To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery?” “For trust not him that once hath broken faith.” _King Henry VI._ “Against ill chances men are ever merry; But heaviness foreruns the good event.”