He led them around the house and down the terraces of the formal garden, and here the major’s encomiums broke forth again. “You are going to take us old folks back, sah,” he said with real feeling. “This gyarden in its original lines was unique. It had a piquancy and a picturesqueness that, thank God, are to be restored! One can understand the owner of an estate like this having no desire to spend his life philandering abroad. We all hope, sah, that you will recur to the habit of your ancestors, and count Damory Court home.” Valiant smiled slowly. “I don’t dream of anything else,” he said. “My life, as I map it out, seems to begin here. The rest doesn’t count—only the years when I was little and had my father.” The major carefully adjusted his eye-glasses. His head was turned away. “Ah, yes,” he said. [Pg 258] “The last twenty years,” continued the other, “from my present view-point, are valuable mainly for contrast.” “As a consistent regimen of p t de foie gras,” said Shirley quizzically, “makes one value bread and butter?” He shook his head at her. “As starvation makes one appreciate plenty. The next twenty years are to be here. But they hold side-trips, too. Now and then there’s a jaunt back to the city.” “Contrast again?” she asked interestedly. “Yes and no. Yes, because no one who has never known that blazing clanging life can really understand the peace and blessedness of a place like this. No, because there are some things which are to be found only there. There are the galleries and the opera. I need a breath of them both.” “You’re right,” nodded the major. “Birds are birds, and Melba is Melba. But a sward like this in the early morning, with the dew on the grass, is the best opera for a steady diet.” “I called them only side-trips,” said John Valiant. “And semi-occasional longer flights, too,” the major reflected. “A look-see abroad once in a blue moon. Why not?” “Yes. For mental photographs—impressions one can’t get from between book-covers. There’s an old cloister garden I know in Italy and a particular river-bank in Japan in the cherry-blossom season[Pg 259], and a tiny island with a Greek castle on it in the gean. Little colored memories for me to bring away to dream over. But always I come back here to Damory Court. For this is—home!” They walked beneath the pergola to the lake, where Shirley gave a cry of delight at sight of its feathered population. “Where did you get them from?” she asked. “Washington. In crates.” “That explains it,” she exclaimed. “One day last week the little darkies in the village all insisted a circus was coming. They must have seen these being hauled here. They watched the whole afternoon for the elephants.” “Poor youngsters!” he said. “It’s a shame to fool them. But I’ve had all the circus I want getting the live stock installed.”