Janet’s own feelings were a medley.  It was not, of course, contentment she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when these stole over her.  There were moments, despite her incredible good fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear assailed her; moments of intense sadness at the thought of leaving her friends, of leaving this enchanted place now that miraculously she had found it; moments of stimulation, of exaltation, when she forgot.  Her prevailing sense, as she found herself again, was of thankfulness and gratitude, of determination to take advantage of, to drink in all of this wonderful experience, lest any precious memory be lost.

Like a jewel gleaming with many facets, each sunny day was stored and treasured.  As she went from Mrs. Case’s boarding-house forth to her work, the sweet, sharp air of these spring mornings was filled with delicious smells of new things, of new flowers and new grass and tender, new leaves of myriad shades, bronze and crimson, fuzzy white, primrose, and emerald green.  And sometimes it seemed as though the pink and white clouds of the little orchards were wafted into swooning scents.  She loved best the moment when the Common came in view, when through the rows of elms the lineaments of those old houses rose before her, lineaments seemingly long familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and yet ever stirring new harmonies and new visions.  Here, in their midst, she belonged, and here, had the world been otherwise ordained, she might have lived on in one continuous, shining spring.  At the corner of the Common, foursquare, ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white, with its high chimneys and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded terrace porch open to the sky, was the eighteenth century mansion occupied by Dr. Ledyard.  What was the secret of its flavour?  And how account for the sense of harmony inspired by another dwelling, built during the term of the second Adams, set in a frame of maples and shining white in the morning sun?  Its curved portico was capped by a wrought-iron railing, its long windows were touched with purple, and its low garret—­set like a deckhouse on the wide roof—­suggested hidden secrets of the past.  Here a Motley or a Longfellow might have dwelt, a Bryant penned his “Thanatopsis.”  Farther on, chequered by shade, stood the quaint brick row of professors’ houses, with sloping eaves and recessed entrances of granite—­a subject for an old English print....  Along the border of the Common were interspersed among the ancient dormitories and halls the new and dignified buildings of plum-coloured brick that still preserved the soul of Silliston.  And to it the soul of Janet responded.