THE RETURN HOME 
229 
colours, and asters were coming into fuller bloom. 
Neither mignonette nor heliotrope had thought of 
drooping; roses were blooming in the fan. Car- 
dinal-flowers and rose-mallows shone from the 
moist point of the triangle. Still, the garden had 
a different appearance from what it had had in 
August. 
“It must be because the hydrangeas are in 
bloom,’’ Joseph said when I spoke with him about 
it. 
“Oh, but I have already thought of them,” I 
said. “I was surprised to see how well they looked 
near the phloxes, almost touching the golden glows 
as they do.” It was. not because they were bloom- 
ing that the garden was different. 
“Do you think things are beginning to have a 
tired look?” Joseph asked. 
“No, indeed,” I answered. “Timothy has kept 
everything wonderfully fresh.” 
“Then the change must be in the air that has 
breathed upon the flowers,” Joseph said. 
This perhaps was true. It had ripened some 
of the leaves of the Virginia creeper on the wall, 
where already they shone crimson or red, while here 
and there I noticed yellow or golden leaves melting 
into brown. Surely, the finger of autumn had 
touched our garden. 
“It cannot always be summer,” Joseph reminded 
me. “I suppose autumn has come. I shall soon 
have to go to school.” 
