Jane laid the turtle gently down on the window sill and for a second leaned her head on the chair back. “They want me to write a chapter of the history—it’s Jem’s idea—about the natural history of Willard. You know, darling, I can’t stay awake and concentrate really for more than a half hour, so you will have to help me, maybe write it. Will you?”

“Oh …” John stroked his beard for a moment. “Well, why not?”

“You know it could be a book in itself. I have always wanted you to do it—like White’s Natural History of Selbourne.”

“A mere masterpiece—that’s all you expect, eh?”

“You might pour me a glass of sherry, and one for yourself. And do taste these ineffable creations of Hannah’s.”

So they sipped and munched for a reflective moment. It was one of Jane Tuttle’s great charms that she could induce and carry on intimate silence with those she loved.

“We have to remember, John, that the newcomers often have no idea what the region has to offer—the configuration of brook and lake, the wildness of these woods, even the second growth and the brush which keep the woodcock here. Birds, wildflowers, bushes and trees, mushrooms, butterflies and moths—the wild mixture of it all! And what it does to a pond when the exhaust from those motor boats begins to pollute! Last year I managed to get down to the pond and couldn’t find a single tad-pole!

“Last year when they widened the road down by the old mill they tore out that whole bank where the painted trillium used to be.”

“Oh, it’s a terrible thing!” Jane said. “I lie awake at night and worry. It happens little by little, but then quite suddenly a whole landscape has lost its quality, its character. I think Nick’s concern, and his rage, stem from this—he senses it.”

“You know, the bad thing is that the natives, the real people around here, still look on the land as something to be exploited, not to be treasured.”

“Some do. The Lovelands up the road, poor farmers, living hard, they have more sense about animals—wild animals and all.”

“What you really have in mind then is a glorious paean of praise to the region.”

“Well, in a way, I saw it in my mind’s eye as a secret natural history—what does not yield itself up at first glance. I always remember how dismayed poor old Henry James was the last time he came home. He felt it was a dismal, Raggedy-Andy kind of wildness. He felt at a total loss before a wild piece of woods.” Jane savored this memory, obviously. “And I teased him about all that was hidden away among the underbrush.”

“What did he say then?”