But in Mrs. Manstey's more meditative moods it was the narrowing
perspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved,
at twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in
the fluid yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories
of a trip to Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her
mind's eye to a pale phantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and
dreamy skies. Perhaps at heart Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at
all events she was sensible of many changes of color unnoticed by
the average eye, and dear to her as the green of early spring was
the black lattice of branches against a cold sulphur sky at the
close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunny thaws of
March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, like ink-
spots spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, better
still, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced
the clear-cut tracery of winter. She even watched with a certain
interest the trail of smoke from a far-off factory chimney, and
missed a detail in the landscape when the factory was closed and
the smoke disappeared.

Mrs. Manstey, in the long hours which she spent at her window,
was not idle. She read a little, and knitted numberless
stockings; but the view surrounded and shaped her life as the sea
does a lonely island. When her rare callers came it was
difficult for her to detach herself from the contemplation of the
opposite window-washing, or the scrutiny of certain green points
in a neighboring flower-bed which might, or might not, turn into
hyacinths, while she feigned an interest in her visitor's
anecdotes about some unknown grandchild. Mrs. Manstey's real
friends were the denizens of the yards, the hyacinths, the
magnolia, the green parrot, the maid who fed the cats, the doctor