"I'll undertake to conciliate the mother, and I think she can trust to my ideas of good-breeding." Meanwhile Beatrice walked quickly home.

The Meadowsweets lived at the far end of the town in a large gray stone house.

The house stood back a little from the road, and a great elm tree threw its protecting shade over the porch and upper windows.

It was, however, an ordinary house in a street, and looked a little old-fashioned and a little gloomy until you stepped into the drawing-room, which was furnished certainly with no pretension to modern taste or art, but opened with French windows into a glorious, big, old-world garden.
The house was known by the name of the Gray House, and the old garden as the Gray Garden, but the garden at least bore no resemblance to its neutral-tinted name.

It had green alleys, and sheltering trees, and a great expanse of smoothly kept lawn.