Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/88

78 which stood in the side yard. Stella had copied the summer-house, with much the same genius with which she copied hats or dresses, from a summer-house she had seen in a garden in Milhampton across the river. Stella's summer-house was made of plasterer's laths painted white, and criss-crossed. The summer-house in the garden at Milhampton, designed by a landscape-gardener, had been covered with Dorothy Perkins roses. But sunlight shining through the chinks of Stella's morning-glories and wild-cucumbers, was just as prettily dappled with shadows, as sunshine shining through rose-vines. At night the darkness was just as dense inside Stella's summer-house—a little denser, perhaps. Stella had been particular to plant her seeds thick. Inside Stella's summer-house there hung a Gloucester hammock!

The first night Stephen called on Stella, he had sat in the hammock alone, while Stella had curled herself up on the low step of the summer-house, leaning her head against one of the upright posts, so that the searchlight moon could shine full upon her face, and her caller could observe from the darkness of the hammock how pretty she was.

She was pretty—she was very pretty in those days. But it was not Stella's bright eyes and bright cheeks that Stephen Dallas thought about most, after that first call. It hadn't been quite dark when he arrived. Before he was sure that the red cottage was the house where Stella lived, he had noticed the morning-glories and wild-cucumber vines.

When later that first evening he discovered that Stella had planted the vines herself, had built much