“I do think, perhaps, it was just a little extravagant, dear,” said Mrs. Bittacy, referring to the cedar check, “when we want a lawnmower so badly too.  But, as it gives you such pleasure—­”

“It reminds me of a certain day, Sophia,” replied the old gentleman, looking first proudly at herself, then fondly at the picture, “now long gone by.  It reminds me of another tree—­that Kentish lawn in the spring, birds singing in the lilacs, and some one in a muslin frock waiting patiently beneath a certain cedar—­not the one in the picture, I know, but—­”

“I was not waiting,” she said indignantly, “I was picking fir-cones for the schoolroom fire—­”

“Fir-cones, my dear, do not grow on cedars, and schoolroom fires were not made in June in my young days.”

“And anyhow it isn’t the same cedar.”

“It has made me fond of all cedars for its sake,” he answered, “and it reminds me that you are the same young girl still—­”

She crossed the room to his side, and together they looked out of the window where, upon the lawn of their Hampshire cottage, a ragged Lebanon stood in a solitary state.

“You’re as full of dreams as ever,” she said gently, “and I don’t regret the check a bit—­really.  Only it would have been more real if it had been the original tree, wouldn’t it?”

“That was blown down years ago.  I passed the place last year, and there’s not a sign of it left,” he replied tenderly.  And presently, when he released her from his side, she went up to the wall and carefully dusted the picture Sanderson had made of the cedar on their present lawn.  She went all round the frame with her tiny handkerchief, standing on tiptoe to reach the top rim.

“What I like about it,” said the old fellow to himself when his wife had left the room, “is the way he has made it live.  All trees have it, of course, but a cedar taught it to me first—­the ‘something’ trees possess that make them know I’m there when I stand close and watch.  I suppose I felt it then because I was in love, and love reveals life everywhere.”  He glanced a moment at the Lebanon looming gaunt and somber through the gathering dusk.  A curious wistful expression danced a moment through his eyes.  “Yes, Sanderson has seen it as it is,” he murmured, “solemnly dreaming there its dim hidden life against the Forest edge, and as different from that other tree in Kent as I am from—­from the vicar, say.  It’s quite a stranger, too.  I don’t know anything about it really.  That other cedar I loved; this old fellow I respect.  Friendly though—­yes, on the whole quite friendly.  He’s painted the friendliness right enough.  He saw that.  I’d like to know that man better,” he added.  “I’d like to ask him how he saw so clearly that it stands there between this cottage and the Forest—­yet somehow more in sympathy with us than with the mass of woods behind—­a sort of go-between. That I never noticed before.  I see it now—­through his eyes.  It stands there like a sentinel—­protective rather.”