Upton had hurried home for dinner, the nursery where he was employed not being far away; but Laura Lou's seat was empty. Mrs. Tracy explained that she usually returned from school for the midday meal, but that she had accepted an invitation from a friend that day, and would not be back till evening.

Upton, his shyness worn off, talked eagerly about his work; his employer was hybridizing gladioluses, he explained, and also experimenting in crosses between Japanese and European tree-peonies. All this evidently meant nothing to Mrs. Tracy, who had a stock set of questions ready (Vance perceived) for both of her children, and had learned how to interrogate Upton about his horticultural experiments, and Laura Lou about her studies, without understanding their answers, or even affecting to. She struck Vance as a woman who had lived all her life among people whose language she could not speak, and had learned to communicate with them by signs, like a deaf-mute, while ministering watchfully to their material needs.

Having settled Vance in the hammock she went off with a slatternly woman who came in from one of the next houses to help with the washing; and Vance lay in the warm shade, and dozed, or let his mind wander over his half-written poems. But whenever he tried to write poetry nowadays the same thing happened: after the first few lines, which almost wrote themselves, the inspiration died out, or rather he felt that he didn't know what to say next—that if his mind had contained more of the stuff of experience, words would have flocked of their own accord for its expression. He supposed it must take a good deal of experience to furnish the material for even a few lines of poetry; and though he was not prepared to admit that very little had happened to him, he could not but remember that he was only nineteen, and that there had not been time yet for any great accumulation of events. He finished the Magdalen poem about the lilacs, but haltingly, the expression flagging with the vision—and when it was done he leaned back, lit a cigarette, and thought with a smile what his restless inquisitive sister Mae would have said if she had known how he was spending his first day within reach of New York. "Well, I'll get there all the same, and get to a newspaper office too," he thought, setting his teeth in a last effort at doggedness before sleep once more overcame him.