McGee.




CHAPTER III

NEIGHBORS


On a morning in late March, with a sweet and fresh wind blowing, a
clear sun shining, and a sky so full of soft white woolly clouds that
you might fancy the sky-people had turned their fleecy flock out to
graze in the deep blue pastures, Laurence Mayne and I brought John
Flint downstairs and rolled him out into the glad, green garden, in
the comfortable wheel-chair that the mill-people had given us for a
Christmas present; my mother and Clélie followed, and our little dog
Pitache marched ahead, putting on ridiculous airs of responsibility;
he being a dog with a great idea of his own importance and wholly
given over to the notion that nothing could go right if he were not
there to superintend and oversee it.

The wistaria was in her zenith, girdling the tree-tops with amethyst;
the Cherokee rose had just begun to reign, all in snow-white velvet,
with a gold crown and a green girdle for greater glory; the greedy
brown grumbling bees came to her table in dusty cohorts, and over her
green bowers floated her gayer lovers the early butterflies, clothed
delicately as in kings' raiment. In the corners glowed the
ruby-colored Japanese quince, and the long sprays of that flower I
most dearly love, the spring-like spirea which the children call