Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/126

120 a friendly, affectionate hand under his arm as she walked beside him. It was a hot night, at June's very highest tide, with the garden at the summit of its beauty. The Madonna lilies were in bloom, showing ghostly white through the dark, rows and ranks and armies of them all up and down the walks and borders, sending sudden ripples of sweetness upward to the terrace whenever the faint breeze stirred. There was no moon yet, but the stars were thick overhead, and the moving lanterns of the fireflies glimmered among the trees, low down still as they always are in the first hours of the dark. Janet was thinking that when the world was so beautiful, it was difficult to believe that things could go entirely wrong in it, but she did not find it possible to put her idea into words. It may have been that Cousin Jasper was thinking the same thing as he stopped and stood for a long time at the head of the brick-paved stair leading down from the end of the terrace into the garden. At last he began to descend slowly, unable to make out the steps in the dark, so that he put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. He spoke very suddenly.

"It is not only in body but in spirit that the old must sometimes lean upon the young," he said, and then, with his voice quite cheerful again, began to talk of how well the flowers were doing this year.

Oliver had followed them to the top of the stair and stood above them, listening, but not, apparently, to what Cousin Jasper was saying. His head was