On this afternoon a sort of rapture fell upon us both as we went down
that winding road. The call of the cuckoo resounded from side to side,
clear and sonorous like a bell, it echoed and re-echoed across our
path under the luminous dome of the tranquil sky and over the hedges
of flowering thorn, snow-white and laden with fragrance.

Everywhere the fruit trees were in bloom: delicate masses of white and
pink rose against the smiling innocent blue of the sky.

"Now here is the very place," exclaimed Viola suddenly, and following
her eyes I saw behind the high, green hedge bordering the road on
which we were walking some red roofs rising, half hidden by the masses
of white cherry blossom which hung over them. A cottage was there
boasting a garden in front, a garden that was filled with lilac and
laburnum not yet in bloom; filled to overflowing, for the lilac bulged
all over the hedge in purple bunches and the laburnum poured its young
leaves down on it. A tiny lawn, rather long-grassed and not innocent
of daisies, took up the centre of the garden, and on to this two open
casements looked; above again, two open windows, half-lost in the
white clouds of cherry bloom.

"But how do you know they've any rooms?" I expostulated.

Viola looked at me with jesting scorn in her eyes.

"I don't know yet, but I'm going to find out."

She put her hand unhesitatingly on the latch of this apparently sacred
domain of a private house, opened the gate, and passed in; I followed