James's Street could not
smother its vitality and perfume. He drew it with delight into his
lungs, making such a to-do about it that a passer-by looked up to see
what was the matter, and noticing the hanging tassel of a flamboyant
dressing-gown, at once modestly lowered his eyes again.
But Henry Rogers did not see the passer-by in whose delicate mind a
point of taste had thus vanquished curiosity, for his thoughts had
flown far across the pale-blue sky, behind the cannon-ball clouds, up
into that scented space and distance where summer was already winging
her radiant way towards the earth. Visions of June obscured his sight,
and something in the morning splendour brought back his youth and
boyhood. He saw a new world spread about him--a world of sunlight,
butterflies, and flowers, of smooth soft lawns and shaded gravel
paths, and of children playing round a pond where rushes whispered in
a wind of long ago. He saw hayfields, orchards, tea-things spread upon
a bank of flowers underneath a hedge, and a collie dog leaping and
tumbling shoulder high among the standing grass.... It was all
curiously vivid, and with a sense of something about it unfading and
delightfully eternal. It could never pass, for instance, whereas....
'Ain't yer forgotten the nightcap?' sang out a shrill voice from
below, as a boy with a basket on his arm went down the street.
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