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THE FORTUNE OF THE INDIES

worshipper, Jane, who flicked a turkey-feather brush at her with as much tenderness and dignity as possible.

So came spring, with the smallest pale leaves on the elm-trees of Chesley Street, and daffodils and hyacinths and squills and crocuses in the border, and forsythia scattering golden bells on the new grass; and then rosy weigelia in stout bold clumps under the office-window, and little pink maple-fingers tapping at Jane's casement. All this was delightful, for spring is nowhere so lovely as in Resthaven, with always a glint of blue harbor between young leaves and the smell of salt mingling with the fragrance of hyacinths. There are wild spring flowers, too—hepatica and anemone in the thin woods inland—and out on Bluff Point, if one has patience to look, all manner of lowly, lovely, green things waking. There is one fine hawthorn out there, too, that holds up a glad armful of pink and white stars to the racing wind.

All this, I say, was delightful; but with the flowers and the first song-sparrows came also the first sea-fogs, very thick and very damp. All the doors in Ingram Mansion stuck fast, as they did every spring, and certain floor-