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The Toyman was fast asleep too. Rover and Brownie and Wienerwurst lay curled up in their kennels, with their eyes tight shut. On their poles in their house all the White Wyandottes perched like feathery balls, their heads sunk low on their breasts. On the roof cuddled the pretty pigeons, all pink and grey and white.

Among the lilies appeared a variety of other water-plants, some gracefully bending over like bamboos, others with large deep serrated leaves, while the different forest trees in varied forms rose round us, fringed by a broad band of feathery grass.

Fresher and fresher came the wind from the sea, in puffs, in mild, sweet breezes, in steady, freshening currents, blowing the feathery crowns of the pines, setting the balsam's blue tufts rocking.

The sun was about thirty degrees above the horizon, shining with a liquid radiance, as if he had already drawn up and was shining through the dew of the morning, though it lay yet on all the grasses by the roadside, turning them into gem-plants. Every sort of gem sparkled on their feathery or beady tops, and their long slender blades.

There were flowers everywhere: rose-trees; camellia-bushes, red and white; the first forced hyacinths of the season; a feathery mimosa-tree, tall enough to stand under. The long front of Kitty's study was all windows. At one end was the fireplace, before which she sat.

She nodded, and her chest rose and fell again, stirred by her own deep emotions. "You would give me no reason for your sudden decision." "And I still can give you none." "But why?" She was silent, standing there with the brilliant Southern afterglow falling full upon her beautiful face. Behind her was a background of feathery palms, and we were alone.

The faint buzz of the flies sounded in her ears and seemed more silent than even the silence to which it drew attention. Never before, not in Count Anteoni's garden, had she felt more utterly withdrawn from the world. The feathery tops of the palms were like the heads of sentinels guarding her from contact with all that she had known. And beyond them lay the desert, the empty, sunlit waste.

The debate on the subject was still in progress, when heavy flakes of snow began to fall briskly, with promising appearances of a long continuance. 'Good! said Nick, half in soliloquy, as he viewed the feathery element, and a new idea seemed to strike him, 'I have hit it at last. Boys, no grumblin' or skulkin' now, for I won't have it. You must do as I am goin' to order, or we part company.

And, when the snow melted and the buds returned, the ivy spray, the smiling saxifrage, the purple gentian bell, the feathery rowan leaf, the symmetrical lady's mantle, were hailed and loved first as models, then for themselves. One regret their mother had, almost amounting to shame.

The way was not easy. Sometimes where the trees were thin their legs were tangled knee-deep in a plant covered with minute white feathery blossoms, looking like white swan's-down shot through with green light, that carpeted miles of the ground; sometimes the trees had fallen so thickly that they had to clamber from log to log rather than walk; sometimes their way was a bog, and they were in danger of sinking deeper than was safe.