We went out to the garden in the scented moist air of a maritime spring evening . Behind the garden was a cloudy pine wood ; the house closed it in on the left , while in front and on the right a row of tall Lombardy poplars stood out in stately purple silhouette against the sunset sky . `` Always liked Lombardies , '' said Abel , waving a long arm at them . `` They are the trees of princesses . When I was a boy they were fashionable . Anyone who had any pretensions to gentility had a row of Lombardies at the foot of his lawn or up his lane , or at any rate one on either side of his front door . They 're out of fashion now . Folks complain they die at the top and get ragged-looking . So they do -- so they do , if you do n't risk your neck every spring climbing up a light ladder to trim them out as I do . My neck is n't worth much to anyone , which , I suppose , is why I 've never broken it ; and my Lombardies never look out-at-elbows . My mother was especially fond of them . She liked their dignity and their stand-offishness . They do n't hobnob with every Tom , Dick and Harry . If it 's pines for company , master , it 's Lombardies for society . '' We stepped from the front doorstone into the garden . There was another entrance -- a sagging gate flanked by two branching white lilacs . From it a little dappled path led to a huge apple-tree in the centre , a great swelling cone of rosy blossom with a mossy circular seat around its trunk . But Abel 's favourite seat , so he told me , was lower down the slope , under a little trellis overhung with the delicate emerald of young hop-vines . He led me to it and pointed proudly to the fine view of the harbour visible from it . The early sunset glow of rose and flame had faded out of the sky ; the water was silvery and mirror-like ; dim sails drifted along by the darkening shore .
A bell was ringing XXXXX a small Catholic chapel across the harbour .
If as down for in into of so to with