Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/78

Rh a neighborhood of patient, dingy, retiring poverty. And at last, at the summit of another hill, the closely built-up city ceased; shrillness and smoke did not reach here; and along the shaded street and off over the wide gardens and lawns that stretched away from it were the cool silence and smell of the benignant summer. The hydrangea bushes were in bloom; the gardeners were sprinkling lawns and flowers, and the spraying water trickled pleasantly upon the quiet of the evening; the shade-trees, maple and oak and poplar, were still and dark against the lingering yellow rim of the sky.

"Halket's Road," called the conductor; the car stopped and Floyd alighted in front of a great arched gateway of yellow brick. The two iron wings were wide open, in hospitable contrast to the fence of eight-foot iron spears which ran for several hundred yards along the pavement, and to which the lawn descended in an open, gradual slope. Except for one great clump of willows, every tree and shrub had been uprooted in this sweep of acres; it was now all one clean, clear lawn, with just the horseshoe of maples fringing the driveway, which ascended on one side and descended on the other. This double row of trees curving up over the distant hill concealed the house, but even in the dusk one could see from the street the terrace of the garden—a yellow brick wall against which grew grapevines, and above that the dim masses of the shrubs and flowers and low trees, and the great fountain playing in the centre.

Floyd walked up the smooth driveway between the rows of maples. He was tired and hungry and thinking of nothing but how good it would be to get into a bath and then in clean clothes sit down to dinner. He looked at his watch and quickened his steps; the family dined at half-past seven, and it was a quarter past seven now. Where the driveway turned toward the house, the hill that he had been ascending fell away slowly on the other side, and he looked down its slope upon the park