Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/289

 MITCHY

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garden took in three acres and, full of charming features, had for its greatest wonder the extent and color of its old brick wall, of which the pink and purple surface was the fruit of the mild ages, and the protective function, for a visitor strolling, sitting, talking, reading, that of a sort of nurse of reverie. The air of the place, in the August time, thrilled all the while with the bliss of birds, the hum of little lives unseen and the flicker of white butterflies. It was on the large, flat enclosed lawn that Nanda spoke to Vanderbank of the three weeks that she would have completed there on the morrow and that had been—she made no secret of it—the happiest she had yet spent anywhere. The grayish day was soft and still and the sky faintly marbled, while the more newly arrived of the visitors from London, who had come late on the Friday afternoon, lounged away the morning in an attitude of which every relaxed line referred to the holiday he had, as it were—at first merely looking about and victualling—sat down in front of as a captain before a city. There were sitting-places, just there, out of the full light, cushioned benches in the thick wide spread of old mulberry boughs. A large book of facts lay in the young man's lap, and Nanda had come out to him, half an hour before luncheon, somewhat as 279