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Dorothy would smile faintly, piteously, and sigh ever so gently. Oh, God! the pity of groping around those rooms day in and day out! What mattered it if she sat by the open window, as she had been wont to do? She could not see her lover strolling under the maple-trees, even though she heard his voice and knew he was there.
With some hesitation, yet quite carried away by Hyde's personal longing and impulse, Cornelia went into the garden with her lover. It was a green, shady place, full of great maple-trees and flowering vines and shrubs, and patches of green grass. All kinds of sweet old-fashioned flowers grew there, mingling their scent with the strawberries' perfume and the woody odours of the ripening cherries.
Life was condemned as vanity of vanities before it was mature, and old age a friend that nobody wished to meet, although Japanese old age is but European prime. In a measure, Buddhism is thus responsible for the paralysis of Japanese civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature.
The last days of April had been warm and bright, and there was a tender green on the low-lying fields, and on the poplars that fringed the wood; and the boughs of the maple-trees in the sugar-bush looked purple and brown over the great grey trunks.
The Green Forest was no longer just green; it was of many colors, for Old Mother Nature had set Jack Frost to painting the leaves of the maple-trees and the beech-trees, and the birch-trees and the poplar-trees and the chestnut-trees, and he had done his work well. Very, very lovely were the reds and yellows and browns against the dark green of the pines and the spruces and the hemlocks.
Two long tables were placed end to end in the shade of some maple-trees which stood near the house, and covered with white cloths, then the plates, knives and forks, and drinking-glasses were placed in order.
To sit on the little benches, high above the ground, and look out straight across the meadow; and then, turning to either side, to see the great limbs and branches of the old maple-trees, was indeed a fairy-tale experience. Over the door swung a quaint little old-fashioned signboard, on which in gilt letters were the words "Breezy Inn."
Conscious that the silken girth if silk it were was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple-trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring! Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose, too, she was about to make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper.
It took us an hour at least to clear the great swamp, from which we emerged into a fine wood, composed chiefly of maple-trees. The sun had, during our immersion in the dark shades of the swamp, burst through his leaden shroud, and cast a cheery gleam along the rugged boles of the lofty trees.
I liked hearing the bells ring, and I liked being hitched under the maple-trees, with all the neighbors' horses to keep me company. We generally dozed while the folks were indoors, and woke up brisk and lively, and started for home in procession.
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