The Close was the favorite retreat of the Rectory household. In the wintertime, it was a windless, sunny spot, never without bird-life, for to it fared every sparrow of the neighborhood, knowing that the two long stone benches in the yard would be plentifully strewn with crumbs, and that no prowling cat would threaten a feathered feaster.
With the coming of spring, the small inclosure was like a chalice into which the sun poured a living stream. Here the lawn early achieved a startling greenness as well as a cutable height; here a pair of peach trees dared to put out leaves despite any pronouncement of the calendar; and in the Close, even before open cars began their run along the near-by avenue, a swinging-couch with a shady awning was installed at one side; while opposite, beyond the sun-dial, and nearer to the drawing-room, a lawn marquee went up, to which Dora brought both breakfast and luncheon trays.
The Close, shut in on its four sides, afforded its visitors perfect privacy. The high blank wall of an office building, which had conformed its architecture to that of the Church and the other structures related to the Church, lifted on one hand to what—from the velvet square of the little yard—seemed the very sky. Directly across from the office building was the Rectory; and two windows of the drawing-room, as well as two upper windows (the window of a guest-room and the window of "the study") opened upon it.
One face of the Church, ivy-grown and beautified with glowing eyes of stained-glass, looked across the stretch of green to a high brick wall which shut off the sights and sounds of the somewhat narrow and fairly quiet street. It was over this wall that the peach trees waved their branches, and in the late summer dropped a portion of their fruit. And it was in this wall that there opened a certain door to the Close which was never locked—a little door, painted a gleaming white, through which the Orphanage babies came, to be laid in the great soft-quilted basket that stood on a stone block beneath a low gable-roof of stone.
On this perfect spring morning, the Close was transformed, for the swinging-couch and the lawn marquee were gone, and a great wedding-bell of hoary blossoms was in its place, hung above the wide flagstone which lay before this side entrance to the Church. Flanking the bell on either hand, flowers and greenery had been massed by the decorators to achieve an altar-like effect. And above the bell, roofing the improvised altar, was a canopy of smilax, as Gothic in design as the vari-tinted windows to right and left.
Discussing the unwonted appearance of their haunt and home, the bird-dwellers of the Close flew about in some excitement, or alighted on wall and ledge to look and scold. And fully as noisy as the sparrows, and laboring like Brownies to set the yard to rights following the departure of the florist and his assistant, a trio of boys from the choir raked and clipped and garnered into a sack.
Ikey was in command, and wielded the lawn mower. Henry, a tall mild-eyed lad, selected for the morning's pleasant duty in the Close in order to reward him for irreproachable conduct during the week previous, snipped at the uneven blades about the base of the sun-dial. The third worker was Peter, a pale boy, chosen because an hour in the open air would be of more value to him than an hour at his books.
"I tell you she iss not a Gentile!" denied Ikey, who was arrogant over being armed with authority as well as lawn mower.
"She is so!" protested Henry, with more than his usual warmth.
"I know she ain't!"