Joan Silver-pin 
3 21 
path, then by the shadowy fence-side toward the 
barn. I was not wandering in the garden for sweet 
moonlight, for there was none ; nor for love of 
flowers, nor in admiration of any of nature’s works, 
for it was very cold ; we even spoke of frost, as we 
ever do apprehensively on a chilly night in spring. 
The kitten was lost. She was in the shrubbery at 
the garden end, for I could hear her plaintive yowl- 
ing; and I thus traced her. I gathered her up, purr- 
ing and clawing, when I heard by my side a cross 
rustling of leaves and another complaining voice. It 
was the Crown-imperial, unmindful or unwitting of 
my presence, and muttering peevishly : “ Here I am, 
out of fashion, and therefore out of the world ! torn 
away from the honored border by the front door 
path, and even set away from the broad garden beds, 
and thrust with sunflowers and other plants of no 
social position whatever down here behind the barn, 
where, she dares to say, we c can all smell to heaven 
together.’ 
“What airs, forsooth ! these twentieth century chil- 
dren put on ! Smell to heaven, indeed ! I wish her 
grandfather could have heard her! He didn’t make 
such a fuss about smells when I was young, nor 
did any one else ; no one’s nose was so over-nice. 
Every spring when I came up, glorious in my dress 
of scarlet and green, and hung with my jewels of 
pearls, they were all glad to see me and to smell me, 
too ; and well they might be, for there was a rotten- . 
appley, old-potatoey smell in the cellar which per- 
vaded the whole house when doors were closed. 
And when the frost came up from the ground the 
