You were the squarest boy I ever saw.

But foreign parts have drawn you out like a ship's mast." She was dragging me by the hand all the time, and now halted me in front of the great square fern-bed in the corner between the window and the hearth, and stood looking up into my face with the air of an artist awaiting approval of her latest masterpiece.

A dear old face, sharp-featured, clever, all alive with the brightness of that which was in her, and with two bright dark eyes sparkling like a robin's under the black silk sun-bonnet which the gossips said she wore day and night.
I knew she looked just all that, but no eyes or thought had I for Aunt Jeanne or anyone else just then.
For here in front of me was the great green fern-bed, green no longer but transformed into a radiant shrine of flowers.

Nine feet long it was, and not much less in width, and its solid oaken sides rose some two feet from the floor.

It was heaped indeed with the bronze-green fronds and russet-gold stalks of fresh-cut bracken, but this was only the ordinary workaday foundation, and was almost hidden beneath a coverlet of roses--roses of every hue from damask-red to saffron-yellow and purest white, heaped and strewn in richest profusion and filling the room with perfume.