a little, as Mrs. Nye was only too glad to do. “See what a droughty summer it ’as been!” she pleaded to that depth of uncompromising truth within her which could not quite allow the “paddock” to be a “meadow.”
And then, finally, she reached some cottages; and, although they were only built flimsily of wood, and had tin roofs, and could not in any way pretend to be the real thing in cottages, yet they stood each one in a garden of its own, and all the gardens were full of flowers, and all the flowers had the proper autumn gorgeousness and glow. Dahlias there were, velvet-rich, deeply or brightly crimson; yellow sunflowers, “red-hot pokers,” gaudy zinnias and gaillardias; the scarlet fires of salvia, and the sweet, clear brilliance of carnations.
The last cottage of all, too, was separated from its neighbours by a small apple-orchard. Mrs. Nye had to stop and look at that—at those balls of colour, russet-gold and ruddy, basking so cosily, with the sunshine settled on them, among the still-thick leaves. “Apples is such a friendly fruit!” she said. “That’s Nonparrle, ain’t you? an’ you’re Cox’s Orange, an’ there’s some pearmains—I halwus did like pearmains, so pretty in their shape as well as toothsome, an’ streaked like a old lady’s cheek. Dear heart alive! do but look at they great yaller, yaller pears, too. . . . Pears? No, they ain’t. Looks like a quince for shape, but I never see quinces grow thick as that!”
A few steps farther brought her within sight of the cottage to which the orchard belonged. It was a little cottage, very low in the roof, almost buried in tall bushes of lilac, and built—oh wonder! of
