So they looked about to find a shelter for the night.  The village—­it was only a hamlet—­had no hotel, no cafe, even.  Finally an old peasant said that old Mother Servin—­a widow—­living a mile up the road—­had a big house, lived alone, and could take them in,—­if she wanted to,—­he could not say that she would.

It seemed to them worth trying, so they started off in high spirits to tramp another mile, deciding that, if worse became worst—­well—­the night was warm—­they could sleep by the roadside under the stars.

It was near the hour when it should have been dark—­but in France at that season one can almost read out of doors until nine—­when they found the place.  With some delay the gate in the stone wall was opened, and they were face to face with the old widow.

It was a long argument, but the Doctor had a winning way, and at the end they were taken in,—­more, they were fed in the big clean kitchen, and then each was sheltered in a huge room, with cement floor, scrupulously clean, with the quaint old furniture and the queer appointments of a French farmhouse.

The next morning, when the Doctor threw open the heavy wooden shutters to his window, he gave a whistle of delight to find himself looking out into what seemed to be a French Paradise—­and better than that he had never asked.

It was a wilderness.  Way off in the distance he got glimpses of broken walls with all kinds of green things creeping and climbing, and hanging on for life.  Inside the walls there was a riot of flowers—­hollyhocks and giroflees, dahlias and phlox, poppies and huge daisies, and roses everywhere, even climbing old tree trunks, and sprawling all over the garden front of the rambling house.  The edges of the paths had green borders that told of Corbeil d’Argent in Midwinter, and violets in early spring.  He leaned out and looked along the house.  It was just a jumble of all sorts of buildings which had evidently been added at different times.  It seemed to be on half a dozen elevations, and no two windows were of the same size, while here and there an outside staircase led up into a loft.

Once he had taken it in he dressed like a flash—­he could not get out into that garden quickly enough, to pray the Widow to serve coffee under a huge tree in the centre of the garden, about the trunk of which a rude table had been built, and it was there that the Divorcee found him when she came out, simply glowing with enthusiasm—­the house, the garden, the Widow, the day—­everything was perfect.

While they were taking their coffee, poured from the earthen jug, in the thick old Rouen cups, the Divorcee said: 

“How I’d love to own a place like this.  No one would ever dream of building such a house.  It has taken centuries of accumulated needs to expand it into being.  If one tried to do the thing all at once it would look too on-purpose.  This place looks like a happy combination of circumstances which could not help itself.”