; nor did I
wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the
June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with that
delicious superabundance of small well-tended gardens which at first
sight takes away all thought from the beholder save that of beauty. The
blackbirds were singing their loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof-
ridge, the rooks in the high elm-trees beyond were garrulous among the
young leaves, and the swifts wheeled whining about the gables. And the
house itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of
summer.

Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said:

"Yes, friend, this is what I came out for to see; this many-gabled old
house built by the simple country-folk of the long-past times, regardless
of all the turmoil that was going on in cities and courts, is lovely
still amidst all the beauty which these latter days have created; and I
do not wonder at our friends tending it carefully and making much of it.
It seems to me as if it had waited for these happy days, and held in it
the gathered crumbs of happiness of the confused and turbulent past."

She led me up close to the house, and laid her shapely sun-browned hand
and arm on the lichened wall as if to embrace it, and cried out, "O me! O
me! How I love the earth, and the seasons, and weather, and all things
that deal with it, and all that grows out of it,--as this has done!"

I could not answer her, or say a word. Her exultation and pleasure were
so keen and exquisite, and her beauty, so delicate, yet so interfused
with energy, expressed it so fully, that any added word would have been
commonplace and futile. I dreaded lest the others should come in
suddenly and break the spell she had cast about me; but we stood there a
while by the corner of the big gable of the house, and no one came. I
heard the merry voices some way off presently, and knew that they were
going along the river to the great meadow on the other side of the house
and garden.

We drew back a little, and looked up at the house: the door and the
windows were open to the fragrant sun-cured air; from the upper window-
sills hung festoons of flowers in honour of the festival, as if the
others shared in the love for the old house.

"Come in," said Ellen. "I hope nothing will spoil it inside; but I don't
think it will. Come! we must go back presently to the others. They have
gone on to the tents; for surely they must