In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross the Common to Mrs. Maturin’s—­a dwelling typical of the New England of the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity of a mansion.  Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival colours of spring.  By September it would have changed.  For there is one glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster.

Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs. Maturin and Janet on long walks into the country.  There were afternoons when the world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue,—­the landscape like a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo.  The arbutus, all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the ginger.  In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of bluets, wild violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering beside the star moss all a-shimmer with new green.  The Canada Mayflower spread a carpet under the pines; and in the hollows where the mists settled, where the brooks flowed, where the air was heavy with the damp, ineffable odour of growing things, they gathered drooping adder’s-tongues, white-starred bloodroots and foam-flowers.  From Insall’s quick eye nothing seemed to escape.  He would point out to them the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur, above the columbine, the woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high above their heads, the red gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit foliage, the oriole and vireo where they hid.  And his was the ear that first caught the exquisite, distant note of the hermit.  Once he stopped them, startled, to listen to the cock partridge drumming to its mate....

Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths.  Mrs. Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow it.

“Now, Brooks,” she would say, “you’ve just got to suggest something to put in that border to replace the hyacinths.”

“I had larkspur last year—­you remember—­and it looked like a chromo in a railroad folder.”

“Let me see—­did I advise larkspur?” he would ask.

“Oh, I’m sure you must have—­I always do what you tell me.  It seems to me I’ve thought of every possible flower in the catalogue.  You know, too, only you’re so afraid of committing yourself.”