"There is a suspicious-looking cloud, bigger than a man's hand."
"Oh, then let us hurry! Nonsense, Phil, why do you alarm a body? See how the sun shines. It is going past. Now—down at the end of this lane——"
Just then some great drops fell. Primrose ran like a sprite and turned a triumphant face to the others when she was under shelter.
It was indeed a fairy nook with a strip of woods back of it. A little thread of a stream ran by on one side. In summer, when the trees were in full leaf, it would be a bower of greenery. A low, story-and-a-half house, with a porch running all across the front, roofed over with weather-worn shingles. The hall doors, back and front, stand wide open, and there is a long vista reaching down to the clump of woods made up of a much-patched-up trellis with several kinds of vines growing over it to furnish a delightful shade in summer. Some benches in the shining glory of new green paint stand along the edge. There was a small table with three people about it, and the stout, easy-going hostess, who pronounced them "lucky," as there comes a three-minutes' fierce downpour of rain while the sun is still shining, then stops, and everything is beaded with iridescent gems. The very sky seems laughing, and the round sun fairly winks with an amused joviality.
In the small front yard the grass is green and thickly sown with tulips that have two sheath-like leaves of bluish-green enfolding the bud. "It will be a sight presently," exclaimed Polly, "but so will most of the gardens. Why, we might be Hollanders, such a hold has this tulip mania taken of us!"
By craning their necks a little they can look out on the Delaware and see the ambitious little creek rushing into it. The glint of the sun upon the changing water is magnificent.
"What a beautiful spot! Why, Polly, have we ever been here before?" asked Allin.
"No, I think not. There are some places very like it on the Schuylkill. But I do not remember this."
Then the hostess comes to inquire what she can serve them with. There is fresh birch beer, there is a sassafras metheglin made with honey, there is mead, and she looks doubtfully at the two soldiers as if her simple list might not come up to their desires.
"And cheesecake?" ventured Primrose.