arise looked across at Marsh and found his eyes on her with an
expression she rarely saw in them, almost a peaceful look, as of a man
who has had something infinitely satisfying fall to his lot. He smiled
at her gently, a good, quiet smile, and looked away into the extravagant
splendor of a row of peonies.

Marise felt an inexplicable happiness, clear and sunny like the light in
the old garden. She sat down on the bench and fell into a more relaxed
and restful pose than she had known for some time. What a sweet and
gracious thing life could be after all! Could there be a lovelier place
on earth than here among Cousin Hetty's flower-children. Dear old Cousin
Hetty, with her wrinkled, stiff exterior, and those bright living eyes
of hers. She was the willow-tree outside and the brook inside, that's
what she was. What tender childhood recollections were bound up with the
sight of that quiet old face.

"And those rose-bushes," continued the old woman, "are all cuttings my
great-great-grandmother brought up from Connecticut, and _they_ came
from cuttings our folks brought over from England, in 1634. If 'twas a
little later in the season, and they were in bloom, you'd see how
they're not nearly so I double as most roses. The petals are bigger and
not so curled up, more like wild roses."

She sat down beside the others on the long wooden bench, and added, "I
never dig around one of those bushes, nor cut a rose to put in a vase,
without I feel as though Great-great-grandmother and Grandmother and all
the rest were in me, still alive."

"Don't you think," asked Marise of the two men, "that there is something
awfully sweet about feeling yourself a part of the past generations,
like that? As we do here. To have such a familiarity with any corner of
the earth . . . well, it seems to me like music, the more familiar it is,
the dearer and closer it is . . . and when there are several generations
of familiarity back of you. . . . I always feel as though my life were a
part of something much bigger than just _my_ life, when I feel it a
continuation of their lives, as much as of my own childhood. It always
seems deep and quieting to me."

Mr. Welles assented wistfully, "It makes me envious."

Marsh shook his head, sending up a meditative puff of smoke. "If you
want to know how it really strikes me, I'll have to say it sounds plain
sleepy to me. Deep and quieting all right, sure enough. But so's opium.
And in my experience, most thi