d the parrot committed to her care. On the
third day, Mrs. Manstey, in spite of her gouty hand, had just penned a
letter, beginning: "Madam, it is now three days since your parrot has
been fed," when the forgetful maid appeared at the window with a cup of
seed in her hand.

But in Mrs. Manstey's more meditative moods it was the narrowing
perspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved, at
twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in the
fluid yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories of a trip
to Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her mind's eye to a pale
phantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and dreamy skies. Perhaps at
heart Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at all events she was sensible of many
changes of color unnoticed by the average eye, and dear to her as the
green of early spring was the black lattice of branches against a cold
sulphur sky at the close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunny
thaws of March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, like
ink-spots spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, better
still, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced the
clear-cut tracery of winter. She even watched with a certain interest
the trail of smoke from a far-off factory chimney, and missed a detail
in the landscape when the factory was closed and the smoke disappeared.

Mrs. Manstey, in the long hours which she spent at her window, was not
idle. She read a little, and knitted numberless stockings; but the view
surrounded and shaped her life as the sea does a lonely island. When her
rare callers came it was difficult for her to detach herself from the
contemplation of the opposite window-washing, or the scrutiny of certain
green points in a neighboring flower-bed which might, or might not, turn
into hyacinths, while she feigned an interest in her visitor's anecdotes
about some unknown grandchild. Mrs. Manstey's real friends were the
denizens of the yards, the hyacinths, the magnolia, the green parrot,
the maid who fed the cats, the doctor who studied late behind his
mustard-colored curtains; and the confidant of her tenderer musings was
the church-spire floating in the sunset.

One April day, as she sat in her usual place, with knitting cast aside
and eyes fixed on the blue sky mottled with round clouds, a knock at the
door announced the entrance of her landlady. Mrs. Manstey did not
care for her landlady, but she submitted to