Green Fancy

"My dear fellow, don't distress yourself," cried Barnes heartily. "There isn't the least reason in the world why--"

"You see, the poor old chap asks us up here once or twice a year,-- that is to say, De Soto and me,--to keep his sister from filling the house up with men he can't endure. So long as we occupy the only available rooms, he argues, she can't stuff them full of objectionables. Twice a year she comes for a month, in the late fall and early spring. He's very fond of her, and she stands by him like a major."

"Why does he continue to live in this out-of-the-world spot, Mr. O'Dowd? He is an old man, I take it, and ill."

"You wouldn't be wondering if you knew the man," said O'Dowd. "He is a scholar, a dreamer, a sufferer. He doesn't believe in doctors. He says they're all rascals. They'd keep him alive just for the sake of what they could get out of him. So he's up here to die in peace, when his time comes, and he hopes it will come soon. He doesn't want it prolonged by a grasping, greedy doctor man. It's his kidneys, you know. He's not a very old man at that. Not more than sixty-five."

"He certainly has a fanciful streak in him, building a place like that," said Barnes, looking not at the house but into the thicket above. There was no sign of the blue and white and the spun gold that still defied exclusion from his mind's eye. He had not recovered from the thrall into which the vision of loveliness plunged him. He was still a trifle dazed and distraught.

"Right you are," agreed O'Dowd; "the queerest streak in the world. It's his notion of simplicity. I wish you could see the inside of the place. You'd wonder to what exalted heights his ideas of magnificence would carry him if he calls this simplicity. He loves it all, he dotes on it. It's the only joy he knows, this bewildering creation of his. For nearly three years he has not been more than a stone's throw from the walls of that house. I doubt if he's been as far as the spot where we're standing now."

"Green Fancy. Is that the name he gave the place or does it spring from--"

"'Twas christened by me own sister, Mr. Barnes, the first time she was here, two years ago. I'll walk with you to the fence beyond if you've no objections," said O'Dowd, genially, and linked his arm through that of Barnes.

The latter was at once subtly aware of the fact that he was being deliberately conducted from the grounds. Moreover, he was now convinced that O'Dowd had been close upon his heels from the instant he entered them. There was something uncanny in the feeling that possessed him. Such espionage as this signified something deep and imperative in the presence not only of O'Dowd but the Jack-in-the-box gardener a few minutes earlier. He had the grim suspicion that he would later on encounter the spectacled De Soto.