And up came a Poplar ninety feet tall.
I settled down for life, as happy as could be,
In my little wee Lime-House by my big Poplar-Tree.
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT.
Late October and a grey morning tinging to gold through the warming mist. A large comfortable dining-room smelling faintly of chrysanthemums and more strongly of coffee and breakfast dishes. In the hearth a great fire, throwing its flames about as with joy of life. The table-cloth, the silver, the dishes, the carpet on the floor, the side-board, the pictures, the wall-paper told of wealth and ease, the fruits of peace, and the arrangement of these things told of the good taste which is so essentially the fruit of long peace.
The room was empty, and the first to enter it that morning was the Mother. She was a tall imposing woman, and her bearing and her little mannerisms were of the kind that the latter-day novelists have delighted to use as matter for their irony. It was the Boy's birthday—his eighteenth birthday, the first he had spent at home since he had been going to his preparatory and his public school. So she departed from the usual routine to place by the side of his napkin the neat little parcels she had brought down with her. Two of them were from her other sons fighting in France. They were a very affectionate and united family—father and mother and the three sons.
After that she went to her husband's end of the table and looked through the heap of letters placed there as usual by the admirable butler. It was understood of old that she opened no letters but those addressed to her, not even the letters from the fighting sons when they happened to write to their father instead of to her.