"Of course she's made that way."

It was like a touch to keep the machinery going, and he responded:—

"You see, I hadn't asked her to set the day. It was kind of understood between us. An' then Clayton Rand come along an' begun to shine up to her, spendin' money like water, an' her mother was bewitched by it. So she orders Alida to throw me over an' take up with t'other man. I don't know 's Alida's to blame."

"Do you s'pose they're engaged?" asked Dorcas, for the hundredth time.

He was silent for a moment, brooding. Then he answered, as he always did:—

"That's more'n I can make out. But if they are, I'll break it. Give me time enough, an' I'll do it when they're walkin' into the meetin'-house, if I don't afore."

Dorcas felt old and tired. All her buoyant life seemed to settle to a level where she must foster the youth of others and starve her own.

"Well," she said gently, "you've done pretty well this year, sellin' house-lots an' all."

"I've done well this year an' I'm goin' to keep on," said Newell, in that dogged way he had. Often it heartened her, but never when it touched upon his weary chase. Then it seemed to her like some rushing force that should be used to turn a mill, wandering away into poor meadows, to be dried and lost. But he was ending as he always did: "Clayton Rand won't marry so long 's his mother's alive, no matter how much money he's got. An' while Alida's waitin' for him, I'll lay up what I can, an' I bet you I get her yet."

"You goin' to pick peas in the mornin'?" asked Dorcas.

She had heard the clock striking, and it counseled her to remember how early their days began.

Newell came out of his dream. "Yes," he said, "that patch down the river road. I guess we can get off ten bushels or more by the afternoon train."

"All right," said Dorcas. "I'll be there."

"You mustn't walk down. I'm goin' t'other way myself, but I'll hitch up Jim, an' you can leave him in the old barn till you come home."

"No," said Dorcas, rising. "I'll walk. I'd rather by half than have the care of him. Maybe I'll catch a ride, too."

They said good-night, and Newell was walking down the path where clove-pinks were at their sweetest, when he turned to speak again. Dorcas, forgetful of him, had stretched her arms upward in a yawn that seemed to envelop the whole of her. As she stood there in the moonlight, her tall figure loomed like that of a priestess offering worship. She might have been chanting an invocation to the night. The man, regarding her, was startled, he did not know why. In that instant she seemed to him something mysterious and grand, something belonging to the night itself, and he went away with his question unasked. Dorcas, her yawn finished, went in to think of him, as she always did, in the few luxurious moments before she slept. But her nights were always dreamless. She had the laborer's tired muscles and acquiescent nerves.

It was two years now since she and Newell had become, in a sense, partners. An affliction had fallen upon each of them at about the same time, and, through what seemed chance, they had stretched out a hand each to steady the other, and gone on together. It was then that Dorcas's mother had had her first paralytic stroke, and Dorcas had given up the district school to be at home. But she was poor, and when it became apparent that her mother might live in helpless misery, it was also evident that Dorcas must have something to do. At that time Newell, under the first cloud of disappointed love, had launched into market-gardening, and he gave Dorcas little tasks, here and there, picking fruit and vegetables, even weeding and hoeing, because that would leave her within call of home, where a little girl sat daily on guard. Newell lived alone, with old Kate to do his work, and soon it became an established custom for Dorcas to cook savory dishes for him, on the days when Kate's aching joints kept her smoking and grumbling by the fire. In a thousand ways she unconsciously slipped into his life, with his accounts, his house purchases, and the work of his fields; and the small sums he paid her kept bread in her mother's mouth.

And now her mother had died, but Dorcas still kept on. She had no school yet, she told herself excusingly; but a self she would not hear knew how intently she was fighting Newell's own particular battle with him, how she watched here and there lest a penny be spilled and his road be made the longer to the goal he fixed. She was quite willing to consider breaking up Alida's intimacy with the other man, because, to her dispassionate mind, Alida was of no account in the world of feeling. She might have her mild preferences, but if Newell could give her muslin dresses and plated pins, he would suit her excellently. And Newell wanted her. As for Clayton Rand, he would be none the poorer, lacking her. She had thought it all out, and she was sure she knew.

The next morning, dressed in brown, the color of the earth she worked in, Dorcas stepped out into the dewy world and closed her door behind her. It was a long walk to the field. For some unguessed reason she had been heavy-hearted at rising; but now the pure look of the early day refreshed her and she went on cheerfully. Since her mother's death life had seemed to her all a maze where she could find few certainties. She had no ties, no duties, save the general ones to neighborhood and church, and her loneliness now and then rose before her like something inexorable and vast, and would be looked at. Perhaps that was why she had thrown herself whole-souled into Newell's willful quest, though at moments she longed to strangle it with passion fiercer than its own; and why she wondered just what she could do after the desire of his heart had flowered and Alida was his wife.

As she walked along, she held her head very high, and carried her hat in her hand, leaving the sun to strike upon her shining braids and light them to a gloss. For the moment she was unreasonably happy, forgetful of the past, and aware only of the sunlight on green fields. Then suddenly she found that a light wagon had drawn up and Clayton Rand was asking her to ride. She looked at him one quick instant before she answered. She had known him when they were both children and he came to spend the summer a mile away, and sometimes, for fun, went to the district school. Since then they had kept up a recognized acquaintance, but this was the first time in years that they had spoken together. He was a heavy-faced young man, with rough-looking clothes of a correct cut, and a suggested taste in dogs and horses.

"Ride?" he asked again, and Dorcas smiled at him out of many thoughts. She could not have whispered them to herself perhaps; but they all concerned Newell and his daily lack. Clayton saw the pretty lifting of her red lip above her small white teeth, and, being a young man ready to leap at desired conclusions, instantly thought of kissing.

"I can't be mistaken," he said elaborately. "This is Miss Dorcas Lee."

Dorcas put her foot on the step and seated herself beside him. Then, surprised at his success, because she had looked to him like a proud person, though in a working-gown, he began a wandering apology for having failed to help her in. Meantime he touched up the beautiful sorrel, and when they began to fly along the road, and the sorrel's golden mane was tossing, Dorcas had a brief smiling concurrence with Alida. To speed like that was perhaps worth the company of Clayton Rand. He was talking to her, and she answered him demurely, with a dignity not reassuring from one of her large type and regal air. But presently he began, by some inner cleverness (for he had a way with him), to tell her stories about horses, and Dorcas listened, wide-eyed with pleasure. The way to the knoll was very short, and there she had to stop in the midst of a racing story that had the movement of the race itself, and bid him leave her. This time he remembered his manners, and leaped out to help her gallantly.

"Miss Dorcas," he called her back after her pretty thanks, "I suppose—I don't half dare to ask you—but you like horses. Just let me take you over to the Country Club to-morrow, and we can see the racing."

For the space of a second, Dorcas gazed at the toe of her patched working-boots. She was thinking, in a confused tangle, of Alida and Newell, and wondering if she had any clothes to wear. Then she lifted her head quickly in a resolution that looked like triumph.

"Thank you," she said, with a shyness very charming in one of her large type; "I should be happy to."

"Thank you," said Clayton, jumping into the wagon. "I'll be along about half-past one."

All that day Dorcas bent over the pea-vines and listened to her thoughts. There were other pickers, but she had no words for them, even when they sat down together for their luncheon, nor for Newell himself, coming at night to take her home.

"You're real tired, I guess," he said, as he left her at the gate.

Dorcas flashed a sudden smile at him. It was all mirth and mischief.

"No," she said soberly, "I don't believe I'm tired."

"I'm goin' to Fairfax to see about sellin' the colt to-morrow," said Newell, from the wagon.

Dorcas nodded.

"Maybe I'll take a day off myself," she said. "I'll be on hand next-day mornin', if you want anything picked. Good-night."

That evening at ten Newell was driving home from the village, and he marked her light in the kitchen. He stopped, vaguely uneasy, and walked up the path to the side door, and as he came he saw the shades go down.

"Dorcas!" he called, at the door, "it's me, Newell."

Then he heard her hurrying steps. But instead of opening the door to him she pushed the bolt softly, and he heard her voice in an inexplicable mixture of laughter and confusion.

"I'm real sorry, Newell, but I can't let you in. I'm awful sorry."

"All right," he said bluffly, turning away, yet conscious of a tiny hurt of pained surprise. "Nothin' wrong, is there?"

"No," came the laughing voice again, "there's nothin' wrong."

"That's all I wanted to know," he explained, as he went down the path. "Seein' the light so late—"

And again the voice followed him.

"Yes, Newell, I'm all right."

Dorcas, an hour after, at her table ironing the dotted muslin she had washed and dried before the fire, laughed out again. She had a new sense of triumph, like a bloom upon the purpose of her life. At last she saw before her a path quite distinct from the dull duties of every day.

When Clayton Rand drove up with his pair of sleek horses and the shining rig that was admired by all the town, she went out and down the path very shyly, and with a blushing sedateness becoming to her. Clayton saw it, and his heart leaped with the vanity of knowing she was moved because of him. But the cause was otherwise. Dorcas knew her hair was beautiful, and that her skin, in spite of its tan, was sweetly pink; but she also knew that the fashion of her sleeves was two years old, and that no earthly power could bring the gloss of youth to her worn shoes again. So she blushed and shrank a little, like a bride, and Clayton, who saw only that her skirts fluttered airily and her hat was trimmed with something soft and white, straightway forgot all the girls he had ever seen, and wondered if his mother could fail to approve such worth as this. And then again he began to talk about horses, and Dorcas began, in her rapt way, to listen, and put in a keen word here and there. Alida, she knew, had one idea of horses: that they were four-legged creatures likely to run away, or to bite your fingers if you gave them grass. It was easy to compete with her there, and also because Dorcas really did love animals and need not pretend.

It was a beautiful day at the races. There were all sorts of magnificent turnouts, and ladies dressed in raiment such as Dorcas had never even imagined. She innocently fancied Clayton must know any number of them, and grew very humbly grateful to him for troubling himself about her. When she suggested that he must have many friends among them, he laughed with an amused candor, and told her they were gentry, a cut above. Yet Dorcas continued to believe he might have consorted with them, if he chose, and her manner to him had a softer friendliness because he was so kind. And when she could forget her old-fashioned gown, she was quite childishly content. At the gate that night he thanked her profusely for the pleasure of her company, and added, boldly:—

"Won't you go to ride a little ways to-morrow night?"

A sudden shyness made her retreat a step, as if in definite withdrawal. It was like a flower's closing.

"Maybe not to-morrow," she hesitated. It seemed to her the events she had moved were rushing, of themselves, too fast.

"Next day, then," he called. "I'll be along about seven. Good-night."

And Dorcas went in to think over her day and dream again, not so much of that as of the desire she was fulfilling for another man.

At that time Newell was very busy over questions of real estate. He had bought, two years before, the whole slope of Sunset Hill, overlooking three townships and the sea, and now city residents had found out the spot and were trying to secure it. That prospect of immediate riches drew his mind away from his gardening. He forgot the patient things that were growing silently to earn him his desire, and only gave orders in the morning to his two men before he drove away to talk about land. Even Dorcas he forgot, save as a man remembers his accustomed staff leaning against the wall till he shall need it. But he has no anxiety about it, for he knows it will be there.

Dorcas hardly missed him, for she, too, had new ways to walk. Clayton Rand came often now. He seemed to be fascinated, perhaps by her beauty and the simplicity of her mien, and perhaps by the dignity of her undefended state. She never asked him into her house, though she would drive and walk with him. Her strength, that summer, seemed to her boundless. She could work all day and sit up half the night sewing old finery or washing and ironing it, and then she could sleep dreamlessly for two or three hours, and wake to work again and drive with Clayton Rand in the evening. It seemed to her at times as if that life would go on breathlessly forever, and then again she knew it would not go on; for she had planned the end toward which it was tending, and the end was almost there.

One afternoon, as she came home from her work flushed and covered with dust, yet looking like an earth-queen in her triumphant health, she had to pass Alida's house, and Alida's mother was waiting for her by the gate. As Dorcas came on swiftly, she had a thought that Alida was not very wise, or she would keep her lovers away from Mrs. Roe. The mother and daughter were too much alike. The older woman was a terrible prophecy. The fairness of youth had faded in her into a soft ivory, her hair was a yellow wisp tightly coiled, and her mouth drooped in a meagre discontent. She regarded Dorcas frowningly from sharp eyes, and Dorcas stepped more proudly. She had fancied this onslaught might await her.

"Dorcas Lee!" called the woman sharply. "Dorcas Lee!"

Then, as Dorcas stopped, in a calm inquiry, the woman went on rushingly, all the words she had not meant to say tumbling forth as she had thought them.

"Dorcas Lee, what are you carryin' on for, the way you be, with Clayton Rand? There ain't a decent girl in town would step in an' ketch anybody up like that. You'll get yourself talked about, if you ain't now. I was a friend to your mother an' I'm a friend to you, an' now I've gone out o' my way to give you warnin'."

Dorcas looked past her up the garden walk and at the porch where Alida sat rocking back and forth, her hands busy as ever with her delicate work.

"Alida!" she called softly. "'Lida, you come here a minute. I want to speak to you."

Alida laid down her work with care and placed her thimble in the basket. Then she came along the garden path, swaying and floating as she always walked, her pretty head moving rhythmically.

"'Lida, you come a step or two with me," said Dorcas gently, when the girl was at the gate. "I want to speak to you."

Alida opened the gate and, without a glance at her mother, stepped out upon the dusty path. People said Mrs. Roe talked so much that everybody had long ago done listening to her, and perhaps she had done expecting it.

"You'd ought to have suthin' over your head," she called to Alida. "You'll be 's black as an Injun."

Dorcas took a long stride into the roadside tangle and broke off a branch of thick-leaved elder. She gave it to Alida, and the girl gravely shaded herself with it from the defacing sun. They walked along together in silence for a moment, and Dorcas frankly studied Alida's face. There was no sign of grief upon it, of loneliness, of discontent. The skin was like a rose, a fainter, pinker rose than Dorcas had ever seen. The soft lips kept their lovely curve.

"'Lida," she breathed, "what you goin' to do to-night?"

"I don't know," said Alida, in her even voice. "Sometimes I sew, when it ain't too hot. I'm makin' me a dotted muslin."

Dorcas found her own heart beating fast. The excitement of it all, of life itself, the bliss, the pain and loss, came keenly on her. She thought of the days that had gone to buying this thing of prettiness, the strained muscles, the racing blood and thrilling brain, the sweat and toil of it, and something choked her to think that now the pretty thing was almost won. Newell would have it, his heart's desire, and in thirty years perhaps it would look like Alida's mother with that shallow mouth. Yet her simple faithfulness was a part of her own blood, and she could not deny him what was his.

"Alida," she said, in an eloquent throb, "do you—do you like him?"

"Who?" asked Alida calmly, turning clear eyes upon her.

Dorcas laughed shamefacedly.

"I don't know hardly what I'm talkin' about," she said. "I've worked pretty hard to-day. 'Lida, if there was anybody you liked, anybody you want to talk things over with—well"—she paused to laugh a little—"well, if I were you, I should just put on my blue dress, the one with the pink rosebuds, an' walk along this road down to the pine grove an' back again."

"The idea!" said Alida, from an unbroken calm. "I should think you were crazy."

Dorcas stopped in the road, decisively, as if the moment had come for them to part.

"That's what I should do, 'Lida," she said, "to-night, every night along about eight, till it happens. An' I should wear my blue."

Alida turned away, as if she felt something unmaidenly in the suggestion and might well remove herself; yet Dorcas knew she would remember. They had separated, and when they were a dozen paces apart, Dorcas called again:—

"'Lida!"

Alida turned. Again Dorcas spoke shyly, from the weight of her great task.

"'Lida, Newell Bond's sellin' off Sunset Hill. He's doin' well for himself."

"Is he?" returned Alida primly. "I hadn't heard of it." Then she turned and, keeping her feet carefully from the dust, went on again.

It seemed to Dorcas that night as if she could not wait to finish the bowl of bread and milk that made her supper, and to put on her white muslin and seat herself by the window. She felt as if the world were rushing fast, the flowers in the garden hurrying to open, the sun to get into the sky and make it redder than ever it had been before, and all happy people to be happier. Something seemed sweeping after her, and she dared not turn and look it in the face. But her heart told her it was the moment that would come after her work had been accomplished and Newell had found Alida. As if she had known it would be so, she saw him coming down the road and called to him. He was walking very fast, his head up, and his hands, she presently saw, clenched as they swung.

"Newell!" she cried, "come in."

He strode up the path and she rose to meet him. She remembered now that she had many things to tell him, and the knowledge of them choked her.

"Newell," she began, "you mustn't go—I don't know where you're goin'—but down that way, you mustn't go till eight o'clock. An' then I guess you'll see her. It'll be better than the house, because her mother's there. Why," her voice faltered and she ended breathlessly, "what makes you look so?"

He looked like wrath. It was upon his knotted brow, the iron lips, and in the blazing of his eyes.

"What's this I've been told?" he said, in a voice she had never heard from him, "about Clayton Rand?"

She laughed, relieved and pleased at her own cleverness.

"It's all right, Newell," she called gleefully. "He hasn't been there for two weeks. He's comin' to-night to take me to ride, an' I'll make him go the turnpike road, an' she'll be down by Pine Hollow, an' you can snap her up under her mother's nose—an' she's got on her blue."

Newell put out his hands and grasped her wrists. He held them tight and looked at her. She gazed back in wonder. In all the months of his repining she had not seen him so, full of warm passion, of a steady purpose.

"Dorcas," he said, "I won't have it!"

She answered in pure wonder and with great simplicity:—

"What, Newell? What won't you have?"

He spoke slowly, leaving intervals between the words.

"I won't have you ridin' with him, nor walkin' with him, nor with any man. If I'd known it, I'd put a stop to it before. Why, Dorcas, don't you know whose girl you are? You're mine."

Floods of color went over her face, and she looked down. Then, as he was silent, she had to speak.

"Newell," she said, "I only meant—I thought maybe I might help you—" There she had to look at him, and found his eyes upon her in a grave sweetness she could hardly understand. No such flower had bloomed for her in her whole life.

"Why, Dorcas," he said, "think how we've worked together! What do you s'pose we worked so for?"

Alida's name rose to her lips, but her tongue refused to speak. At that moment it seemed too slight a word to say.

"'Twas so we could find out where we stood," the grave voice went on. "That was it."

She felt breathless, as if they had together been pursuing some slight thing, a butterfly, a bubble, and now, when it was under their hands, they saw that the thing itself was not what mattered. It was the race. They had kept step, and still together now, they had run into a safe and happy place.

There was the beat of hoofs upon the road.

"Stay here," she breathed. "I can't go with him. I'll tell him so."

She ran out and down the path, a swift Atalanta, her white skirts floating. Clayton Rand was at the gate. Even in the instant of his smiling at her she realized that the smile was that of one who is expectant of a pleasure, but only of the pleasure itself, he does not care with whom. Her eyes glowed upon him, her brown cheeks were red with dancing blood.

"I can't go," she said, in a full, ecstatic voice. "Thank you ever so much. I can't ever go again. See!" she pointed down the road. "Don't she look pretty in among the trees? That's 'Lida. She's got on her blue."

She turned and hastened up the path again. At the door she paused to look once again at the spot of blue through the vista of summer green. It was moving. It was mounting into Clayton Rand's wagon. Then Dorcas went in where Newell was waiting to kiss her.

"He's drove along," she said, from her trance of happiness. "'Lida's gone to ride with him."

Already the name meant no more to them then the bubble they had chased.

"Come, Dorcas, come," said her lover, in that new voice. "Come here to me."



FLOWERS OF PARADISE

Hetty Niles, with a sudden distaste for her lonely kitchen, its bare cleanliness the more revealed by the February sun, caught her shawl from the nail and threw it over her head. She spoke aloud, in a way she had taken up within the last week, while her solitude was still vocal with notes out of the living past:—

"I'll go over an' see Still Lucy."

Her dry face, hardened to all weathers, wore a look of anguish, an emotion that smoldered in the hollows about the eyes, and was tensely drawn around the mouth. She was like one of the earth-forces, or an earth-servitor, scarred by work and trouble, and yet so unused to patience that when it was forced upon her she felt suffocated by it. She hurried out into the fitful weather, and closed her door behind her. With her shawl hugged closely, she took the path across the fields, a line of dampness in the spongy turf, and, head down, made her way steadily to the little white house where Still Lucy, paralyzed for over thirty years, lay on the sofa, knitting lace. Hetty walked into this kitchen with as little ceremony as she had used in leaving her own. She withdrew the shawl from her head, saying, in the act,—

"How do, Lucy?"

The woman looked up from her work, and nodded brightly. To the casual eye she was not of a defined age. Her face was unwrinkled and its outline delicate, and her blue eyes were gay with even a childish pleasure. She looked invitingly at the world, as if it could give her nothing undesired. Yet the soft hair rising in a crown from her forehead was white as silver, and her little hands were old. She was covered to the waist with a cheerful quilt. Her fingers went in and out unceasingly upon her work, while her bright glance traveled about the room. The stove gave out the moist heat of a kitchen fire where the pot is boiling, and the cat cocked a sleepy eye in the sun. Hetty seated herself by the stove, and stretched her hand absently toward its warmth.

"Parson's be'n in," she said abruptly.

"Caroline said so," returned Lucy, in her sweet, husky old voice. "I thought likely."

"He says I must be resigned," continued Hetty, with the same brusque emphasis.

"Oh, yes!" said Lucy. She spoke as if it were a task to be accepted gratefully.

"To the will o' God. 'Parson,' says I, 'I don't believe in God.'"

Lucy's fingers caught out a tangle in her thread, while her delicate brow knotted itself briefly.

"Ain't that hard!" she breathed.

Hetty was brooding over the fire.

"That's what I told him," she went on. "An' I don't. I don't know 's ever I did, to speak of. It never really come up till now. He repeated texts o' Scriptur'. 'Parson,' says I, 'you ain't a woman that had one son, as good a boy as ever stepped, an' then lost him. 'Tain't a week,' says I, 'sence he was carried out o' this house. Don't you talk to me about God.'"

Lucy was looking at her with eloquent responses in her face. Hetty glanced up, and partly understood them.

"Nor you neither, Lucy," she made haste to say. "You're terrible pious, an' you've had your troubles, an' they've be'n heavy; but you ain't had an' lost. If I could take it on me to-day to lay there as you be, knowin' I shouldn't get up no more, I'd jump at it if I could have Willard back, whistlin' round an' cuttin' up didos. Yes, I would."

"I guess you would," murmured Lucy to herself. "It's too bad—too bad."

There was a step on the doorstone, and Caroline came in. She was Lucy's sister, gaunt and dark-eyed, with high cheek-bones, and the red of health upon them. She regarded Hetty piercingly.

"You got company over to your house?" she asked at once.

"No," Hetty answered. She added bitterly, "It's stiller'n the grave. I don't expect company no more."

"Well," commented Caroline.

She had laid aside her shawl, and began fruitful sallies about the kitchen, putting in a stick of wood, catching off the lid from the pot, to regard the dinner with a frowning brow, and then sitting down to extricate from her pocket a small something rolled in her handkerchief.

"I've be'n into Mis' Flood's," she said, "an' she gi'n me this." She walked over to her sister, bearing the treasure with a joyous pride. "It's as nice a slip o' rose geranium as ever I see."

Hetty's face contracted sharply.

"I've throwed away the flowers," she said.

Both sisters glanced at her in sympathetic knowledge. Caroline was busily setting out the slip in a side of the calla pot, and she got a tumbler to cover it.

"Them parson's wife sent over?" she asked.

Hetty nodded. "There was a dozen of 'em," she continued, with pride, "white carnation pinks."

"She sent way to Fairfax for 'em," said Caroline. "Her girl told me. Handsome, wa'n't they?"

"They wa'n't no handsomer'n what come from round here," said Hetty jealously, "not a mite. There you sent over your calla, an' Mis' Flood cut off that long piece o' German ivy, an' the little Ballard gal,—nothin' would do but she must pick all them gloxinias an' have 'em for Willard's funeral. I didn't hardly know there was so many flowers in the world, in winter time." She mused a moment, her face fallen into grief. Then she roused herself. "What'd you mean by askin' if I had company?" she interrogated Caroline.

"Nothin', on'y they say Susan's boy's round here."

"Susan's boy? From out West?"

Caroline nodded.

"He was into Mis' Flood's yesterday," she said, "inquirin' all about you. Said he hadn't seen you sence he was a little feller. Said he shouldn't hardly dast to call, now you an' his mother wa'n't on terms. Seems 's if he knew all about that trouble over the land."

Hetty's face lighted scornfully.

"Trouble over the land!" she echoed. "Who made the trouble? That's what I want to know—who made it? Susan Hill May, that's who made it. You needn't look at me, Lucy. I ain't pious, as you be, an' I don't care if she is my step-sister. You know how 'twas, as well as I do. Mother left me the house because I was a widder an' poor as poverty, an' she left Susan the pastur'. 'Twas always understood I was to pastur' my cow in that pastur', Susan livin' out West an' all, an' I always had, sence Benjamin died; but the minute mother left me the house, Susan May set up her Ebenezer I shouldn't have the use o' that pastur'. She's way out West there, an' she don't want it; but she'd see it sunk ruther'n I should have the good on 't."

"Well," said Lucy soothingly, "you ain't pastur'd there sence she forbid it."

"No, I guess I ain't," returned Hetty, rising to go. "Nor I ain't set foot in it. What's Mis' Flood say about Susan's boy?" she asked abruptly, turning to Caroline.

"Well,"—Caroline hesitated,—"she said he was in liquor when he called, an' she heard he'd be'n carryin' on some over to the Street."

Hetty nodded grimly. She spoke with an exalted sadness.

"I ain't surprised. Susan drove her husband to drink, an' she'd drive a saint. Well, my Willard was as good a boy as ever stepped. That's all I got to say."

The sisters had exchanged according glances, and Caroline asked:—

"Stay an' set down with us? It's b'iled dish. I guess you can smell it."

Hetty was drawing her shawl about her. She shook her head.

"No," said she. "'Bleeged to ye. I'll pick up suthin'."

But later, entering her own kitchen, she stopped and drew a sharp breath, like an outcry against the desolation there. The room was in its homely order, to be broken, she felt, no more. She was childless. All the zest of work had gone. She threw off her shawl then, with a savage impatience at her own grief, and began her tasks. In the midst of them she paused, laid down her cooking-spoon, and sank into a chair.

"O Lord!" she moaned. "My Lord!" This was the worst of all the days since he had died. She understood it now. The flowers were gone. They had formed a link between the present and that day when they made the sitting-room so sweet. Even the fragrance of that last sad hour had fled. Suddenly she laughed, a bitter note. She spoke aloud:—

"If the Lord'll send me some flowers afore to-morrer night, I'll believe in Him. If He'll send me one flower or a sprig o' green, I'll believe in Him, an' hold up my head rejoicin', like Still Lucy."

She repeated the words, as if to One who heard. Thereafter a quickened energy possessed her. She got her dinner alertly, and with some vestige of the interest she had been used to feel when she cooked for two. All the afternoon it was the same. Her mind dwelt passionately upon the compact she had offered the Unseen. Over and over she repeated the terms of it, sometimes with eager commentary.

"It can't hurt nobody," she reasoned, in piteous argument. Her gnarled hands trembled as she worked, and now, with nobody to note her weakness, tears fell unregarded down her face. "There's things I wouldn't ask for, whether or no. Mebbe they'd have to be took away from somebody else; an' I never was one to plead up poverty. But there's plenty o' flowers in the world. 'Twouldn't upset nothin' for me to have jest one afore to-morrer night. If I can have one flower afore to-morrer night, I shall know there's a God in heaven."

The day began with a sense of newness and exaltation at which she wondered. Until this hour, death had briefly ruled the house and chilled the air in it. Her son's overthrow had struck at the heart of her vitality and presaged her own swift doom. All lesser interests had dwindled and grown poor; her life seemed flickering out like a taper in the breeze. Now grief had something to leaven it. Something had set up a screen between her and the wind of unmerciful events. There was a possibility, not of reprieve, but of a message from the unseen good, and for a moment the candle of her life burned steadily. Since the dead could not return, stricken mortality had one shadowy hope: that it should go, in its course, to them, and find them living. Again she vowed her belief to the God who would send one sign of his well-wishing toward her.

"I'll set till twelve o'clock this night," she said grimly, laying her morning fire. "That's eighteen hours. If He can't do suthin' in eighteen hours, He can't ever do it."

At ten o'clock her work was done, and she established herself by the sitting-room window, her knitting in hand, to watch for him who was to come. A warm excitement flooded through her veins.

"How my heart beats!" she said aloud. It had hurried through the peril of Willard's illness and the disaster of his death. It was hurrying now, as if it meant to gallop with her from the world.

At half-past ten there was the sound of wheels. She dropped her knitting and put her hand up to her throat. A carriage turned the bend in the road and passed the clump of willows. It was the minister's wife, driving at a good pace and leaning out to bow. Hetty rose, trembling, her hand on the window-sill. But the minister's wife gave another smiling nod and flicked the horse. She was not the messenger.

Hetty sank back to her work, and knit with trembling fingers. The forenoon wore on. It was Candlemas, and cloudy, and she remembered that the badger would not go back into his hole. There would be an early spring. Then grief caught her again by the throat, at the thought that spring might come, and summer greaten, but she was a stricken woman whose joy would not return. She rose from her chair and called out passionately,—

"Only one flower, jest one sprig o' suthin', an' I'll be contented!"

That day she had no dinner. She made it ready, with a scrupulous exactitude, but she could not eat. She went back to her post at the window. Nobody went by. Of all the neighbors who might have driven to market, not one appeared. Life itself seemed to be stricken from her world. At four o'clock she caught her shawl from its nail, and ran across the field to Lucy. Both sisters were at home, in the still tranquillity of their pursuits, Lucy knitting and Caroline binding shoes. Hetty came in upon them as if a wind had blown her.

"Law me!" said Caroline, looking up. "Anything happened?"

"No," said Hetty, "nothin' 's happened. I don't know as 't ever will."

She sat down and talked recklessly about nothing. A calla bud, yesterday a roll of white, had opened, and the sun lay in its heart. Hetty set her lips grimly, and refused to look at it. Yet, as her voice rang on, the feverish will within her kept telling her what she might say. She might ask for the well-being of the slip set out yesterday, or she might even venture, "I should think you'd move your calla out o' the sun. Won't it wilt the bloom?" Then Lucy might tell Caroline to snip off the bloom and give it to her. But no one spoke of plants. Her breath quickened chokingly, and her heart swelled and made her sick. Suddenly she rose and threw her shawl about her in wild haste.

"I must go," she trembled; but at the door Lucy stayed her.

"Hetty," she called. Her voice faltered, and her eyes looked soft under wistful brows. "Hetty!"

Hetty was waiting, in a tremor of suspense.

"Well," she answered, her voice beating upon the word. "What is it?"

Still Lucy spoke with diffidence, as she always did when she touched upon her faith.

"I was only thinkin'—I dunno 's I can tell you, Hetty—but what you said yesterday, you know, about not believin' there's any God—I was goin' to ask you who you think made the trees an' flowers."

Hetty did not answer. She stood there, her hands trembling underneath her shawl. She gripped them, one upon the other, to keep from stretching them for alms.

"Well," she answered harshly. "Well!"

"Well," said Lucy gently, "that's all."

Hetty laughed out stridently.

"I'm goin' over to Mis' Flood's," said she, her hand upon the latch.

"They've driv' over to Fairfax to spend the day," volunteered Caroline. "Better by half set here."

"Then I'm goin' over to Ballard's." She fled down the road so fast that Caroline, watching her compassionately, remarked that she "looked, as if she's sent for," and Lucy said, like a charm, a phrase of the Lord's Prayer.

Hetty looked up at the Floods' and groaned, remembering there were plants within. She spoke aloud, satirically:—

"Mebbe I could be the instrument o' the Lord. Mebbe if I climbed into the winder, an' stole a bloom, I could say He give it to me."

But she went on, and hurried up the path to the little one-story house where the Ballards lived. Grandsir was by the fire, pounding walnuts in a little wooden mortar, to make a paste for his toothless jaws, and little 'Melia, a bowl of nuts before her, sat in a high chair at the table, lost in reckless greed. Her doll, forgotten, lay across a corner of the table, in limp abandon, the buttonholed eyes staring nowhere. Grandsir spoke wheezingly:—

"We're keepin' house, 'Melia an' me. We thought we'd crack us a few nuts. Help yourself, Hetty."

'Melia lifted her bowl with two fat hands, and held it out, tiltingly. Her round blue eyes shone in a painstaking hospitality. She was a good little 'Melia.

"No, dear, you set it down. I don't want none," said Hetty tenderly. She steadied the bowl on its way back, and 'Melia, relinquishing the claims of entertainment, picked into her small mouth with a swift avidity.

"Clever little creatur'!" Hetty continued, in a frank aside.

But Grandsir had not heard.

"How old was Willard?" he inquired, pausing to test the mass his mortar held.

The tears came into her eyes.

"Thirty-four," she answered.

"How old?"

After she had repeated it, 'Melia turned suddenly, and made a solemn statement.

"I picked off my gloxinias and gave 'em all to Willard." She lisped on the name, and made it a funny flower.

Hetty was trembling.

"Yes, dear, yes," she responded prayerfully. "They were real handsome blooms. I was obleeged to ye." She wondered if the lisping mouth would say, "There's another one open," and the fat hand pluck it for her. She shut her lips and tried to seal her mind, lest the child should be prompted and the test should fail.

"I dunno 's I remember what year Willard's father died?" Grandsir was inquiring.

"O Lord!" breathed Hetty, "I can't bear no more."

She threw her shawl over her head, and hurried out.

"Come again," the childish voice called after her.

Grandsir had begun to eat his nuts. He scarcely knew she had been there.

Hetty went swiftly homeward through the dusk. The damp air was clogging to the breath, and for a moment her warm kitchen seemed a refuge to her. But only for a moment. It was very still.

"I'll give it up," she said. "There's flowers in the world, an' not one for me. I might 'a' had 'em if He'd took the trouble to send. That proves it. There ain't anybody to send,—nor care."

She walked about in a grim scorn of everything: the world, the way it was made, and herself for trusting it. When she had made a cup of tea and broken bread, the warmth came back to her chilled heart, and suddenly her scorn turned against herself.

"I said I'd wait till twelve o'clock to-night," she owned. "I'm the one that's petered out. This is the last word I speak till arter twelve."

She fortified herself with stronger tea, and sat grimly down to knit. The minutes and the half-hours passed. She rose, from time to time, and fed the fire, and once, at eleven, when a cold rain began, she put her face to the pane.

"Dark as pitch!" she muttered. "If anybody's comin', they couldn't see their way."

Then she lighted another lamp and set it in the window. It was a quarter before twelve when her trembling hands failed her, and she laid down her knitting and walked to the front door. The northeast wind whipped her in the face, and she could hear the surf at Breakers' Edge. The pathway of light from the window lay upon a figure by the gate. A voice came out of the stillness. It was young and frank.

"I'm holdin' up your fence, to rest a spell. I've given my ankle a twist somehow."

Hetty ran out into the storm, and the wind lashed strands of hair into her eyes. She stretched a hand over the fence, and laid it on the man's shoulder.

"Who be you?" she demanded.

He laughed.

"I'll tell you, if you won't bat me for it. I'm your own nephew, near as I can make out."

"Susan's son?"

"Yes. Much as my life's worth, ain't it? Never saw anything like you an' mother when you get fightin',—reg'lar old barnyard fowls."

She gripped his shoulder tightly. Her voice had a sob in it, and a prayer.

"You got anything for me?"

He answered wonderingly.

"Why, no, I don't know 's I have. My ankle's busted, that's all. I guess I can crawl along in a minute."

She remembered how fast the clock was getting on toward midnight, and spoke in dull civility.

"You come in. I'll bandage ye up. Mebbe 'twill save ye a sprain."

Later, when he was by the fire and she had done skillful work with water and cotton cloth, and the pain would let him, he looked at her again.

"You an' mother ain't no more alike than a black an' a maltee," he said. "Hullo! what you cryin' for?"

The tears were splashing her swift hands.

"I dunno," she answered shortly. "Yes, I do, too. You speak some like Willard."

The clock was striking two when she went to bed, and she slept at once. It was necessary, she told herself. There was a man in the west room, and his ankle was hurt, and she must get up early to call the doctor.

The next day and the next went like moments of a familiar dream. The doctor came, and the boy—he was twenty-six, but he seemed only a boy—joked while he winced, and owned he had nothing to do, and could easily lie still a spell, if aunt Het would keep him. She was sorry over the hurt, and, knowing no other compensation for a man's idleness, began to cook delicate things for his eating. He laughed at everything, even at her when she was too solicitous. But he was sorry for her, and when she spoke of Willard his face softened. She thought sometimes of what she had heard about him before he came; and one April day, when they were out in the yard together, he leaning on his cane and she sweeping the grass, she spoke involuntarily:—

"I can't hardly believe it."

"What?" he asked.

"Folks said"—she hesitated—"folks said you was a drinkin' man."

He laughed out.

"I did get overtaken," he owned. "I was awful discouraged, the night I struck here. I didn't care whether school kept or not. But 'twas Lew Parker's whiskey," he added, twinkling at her. "That whiskey'd poison a rat."

She paused, with a handful of chips gathered from the clean grass.

"What was you discouraged about?" she asked kindly.

"Well,"—he hesitated,—"I may as well tell you. I've invented somethin'. It goes onto a reaper. Mother never believed in it, an' she turned me down. So I came East. I couldn't get anybody to look at it, an' I was pretty blue. Then the same day I busted my ankle I heard from another man, an' he'll buy it an' take all the risk, an'—George! I guess mother'll sing small when Johnnie comes marchin' home!"

He looked so strong and full of hope that her own sorrow cried, and her face worked piteously.

"You goin' back?" she faltered.

"Sometime, aunt Het. 'Long towards fall, maybe, to get things into shape. Then I'm comin' back again, to put it through. Who's that?"

It was a neighbor, stopping his slumberous horse to leave a letter.

"That's Susan's hand," said Hetty, as she gave it to him.

He read it and laughed a little. His eyes were moist.

"See here, aunt Het," he said, "mother's had a change of heart because I busted my ankle an' you took care of me an' all,—an' look here! she says she wants you should use the long pastur'."

Hetty dropped her apron and the chips it held. She stood silent for a moment, looking out over the meadow and wishing Willard knew. Then she said practically,—

"Soon 's your ankle'll bear ye, we'll poke down there an' see how things seem."

In a week's time they went slowly down to look over the fences, preparatory to turning in the cow. Hetty glanced at the sky, with its fleece of flying cloud, and then at the grass, so bright that the eyes marveled at it. The old ache was keen within her. The earth bereft of her son would never be the same earth again, but some homely comforting had reached her with the springing of the leaf. She looked at the boy by her side. He was a pretty boy, she thought, and she was glad Susan had him. And suddenly it came to her that he had been lent her for a little while, and she was glad of that, too. His hurt had kept her busy. His ways about the house, even the careless ones, had strengthened the grief in her, but in a human, poignant way that had no bitterness.

They went about, testing the fence-lengths, and then, before they left the pasture, stood, by according impulse, and looked back into its trembling green. The boy had let down the bars, but he was loath to go.

"Stop a minute," he said, pointing to an upland bank where the sun lay warm. "I'm tired."

"Lazy, more like," said Hetty. But he knew she said it fondly.

He lay down at full length, and she sank stiffly on the bank and leaned her elbow there. She looked at the sky and then at the bank. It was blue with violets. There were so many of them that, as they traveled up the sod, they made a purple stain.

"Well, aunt Het," said he, "you've got the pastur'."

She nodded.

"Don't make much difference how long you wait," he continued, "if it comes at last." He was thinking of his patent, and Hetty knew it.

"Mebbe we can't have things when we expect to," she answered comprehendingly. "Still Lucy's great on that. 'Don't do no good to set up your Ebenezer,' says she. 'You got to wait for things to grow.' Lucy's dretful pious." She passed her brown hands over the violet heads, as gently as a breeze, caressing but not bending them. "I dunno 's ever I see so many vi'lets afore."

"Like 'em, aunt Het?" he asked her kindly.

"I guess I do!" but as she spoke, her eyes widened in awe and wonder. "My Lord!" she breathed. "They're flowers."

The boy laughed.

"What'd you think they were?" he asked, with the same indulgent interest. "Herd's grass?"

He turned over and buried his sleepy visage in the new leaves. But Hetty was communing with herself. Her old face had a look of hushed solemnity. Her eyes were lighted from within.

"Sure enough," she murmured reverently. "They're flowers."



GARDENER JIM

"Jim!" called Mrs. Marshall, as the old man, carrying a basket in one hand and a spade in the other, was trudging steadily by. His blue overalls and jumper were threadbare under the soft brown they had achieved through his strenuous kneeling and the general intimacy of weeds and sod. He had a curious neutrality of expression—perhaps an indifference to what his blue eyes fell upon, save when they looked out from under their rugged brows at the growing things he tended. Then the lines about them multiplied and deepened, and his face took on new life.

Mrs. Marshall, the large lady at the gate, splendidly starched in her afternoon calico, regarded him without personal interest. He was merely an old resident likely to clear up a matter that had been blurred during her years of absence in the West. Jim's eyes traveled past her to the garden in the rear of the house, where yellow flower-de-luce was beginning to blow.

"They'd ought to put some muck on them pinies last fall," said he, in a soft voice which his gnarled aspect had not foretold.

"Now you stop thinkin' gardins for a minute an' pay some heed to me," said Mrs. Marshall. "How was I goin' to look out for the pinies, when I only come into the property this spring? Uncle'd ha' seen 'em mowed down for fodder before he'd ha' let you or anybody else poke round over anything 'twas his. But what I want to know is—what was 't the Miller twins had their quarrel about, all them years ago?"

Jim answered without hesitation or interest: "'Twas about a man. They both on 'em set by one man, an' he led 'em on. He made trouble betwixt 'em. 'Twas thirty year ago an' more."

"An' they ain't spoke sence! My! what fools anybody can make of themselves over a man! He's dead now, ain't he?"

"I dunno," said Jim. Abstraction had settled upon him. "Say, Mis' Marshall, what if I should drop in an' 'tend to them pinies?"

"Fush on the pinies!" said Mrs. Marshall heartily. "You can, if 't'll be any comfort to ye. 'Twas they that made me think o' the Miller twins. Husband never got over talkin' about their pinies. I'd ruther have a good head o' lettuce than all the pinies that ever blowed."

Jim dropped his traps, opened the gate, walked past her without a word, and began a professional examination of the garden-beds. When he came to a neglected line of box, he made a sympathetic clucking of the tongue, and before a rosebush, coming out in meagre leafage, he stayed a long time.

"Too bad!" he said, as if the bush appealed to him for comfort. "Too bad!"

Mrs. Marshall had gone contentedly back to her sewing by the window, and a cautious voice challenged her from the bedroom, where her daughter, Lily, was changing her dress.

"Well," said Lily, "I guess you've done it this time. Didn't you know 'twas Jim's wife the man run off with? Well, it was."

Mrs. Marshall paused in her work.

"Well," said she, "I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I believe husband did use to say so. I ain't thought of it for years. How'd you find out so much?"

"I guess I don't have to be in a place long without hearin' all there is to hear," said Lily, coming out in her crisp pink muslin. "Here, you hook me up. Why, mother, he's Wilfred's own uncle! Wilfred told me. He said his uncle never'd been the same man since his wife run away."

Jim was wandering back to the road, deflected now and then by some starveling plant.

"Anything you want to do," called Mrs. Marshall, with a compensatory impulse, "you're welcome to. I may put in a few seeds."

Jim stood there, shaking his head in great dissatisfaction.

"It wouldn't ha' done a mite o' good for me to come here while he was alive," he said, as if he accounted to himself for that grievous lapse. "He'd ha' turned me out, neck an' crop, if I'd laid a finger on it."

"Well, you come when you can," said Mrs. Marshall. She was benevolently willing to fall in with Gardener Jim's peculiarities, because, being love-cracked, he had no particular occupation save this self-chosen one. "What you s'pose I said to the new minister about you, Jim?" she continued kindly.

"Dunno," returned Jim, in his soft voice. "Dunno."

"Well, he says to me, 'I never see such a lot o' nice gardins as there is round here.' 'Don't you know the reason?' says I. 'Why, Gardener Jim goes round an' takes care of 'em without money an' without price.' Wake up, Jim. That's what I said."

The look of response had vanished from his face. He had taken a knife from his pocket and was clipping a dead branch from the prairie queen at the window. When the deed had been done with great nicety, he closed the knife, returned it to his pocket, and took his way silently out of the yard. Mrs. Marshall, glancing up from her sewing, saw him again trudging toward his lonely home.

When Jim went along like that, his head bent and his eyes fixed upon the ground, people often wondered whether he was thinking of anything at all, or whether such intentness did betoken a grave preoccupation. Sometimes they tested him. "What you thinkin' about, Jim?" one would ask him, when they met upon the road; but Jim never replied in any illuminating way. If he answered at all, it was only to query, "How's your gardin?" and then, as soon as the response was given, to nod and hurry on again. If the garden was reported as not doing very well, Jim was there next morning, like the family doctor.

To-day, when he reached the cross-road leading to his little black house, he paused a moment, as if he were working out something and must wait for the answer. Then he continued on the way he had been going, and a quarter of a mile farther on stopped before a great house of a dull and time-worn yellow, where, in the corresponding front window of the upper chambers, two women sat, each in her own solitary state, binding shoes. These were the Miller twins. Sophy saw him as he opened the side gate and went along her path to the back of the house. She rose, tossed her work on the table, and ran into an overlooking chamber to watch him. Sophy had been the pretty one of the family. Now her fair face had broadened, her blond hair showed a wide track at the parting, and her mouth dropped at the corners; but her faded blue eyes still looked wistfully through their glasses. They had a grave simplicity, like that of a child.

As she watched Gardener Jim, a frown came upon her forehead. "What under heavens?" she muttered; and then she saw. Jim was examining her neglected garden, and the wonder was not in that. It was that after all these years, when he had worked for other people, suddenly he had come to her. A moment after, he looked up, to find her at his elbow.

"I should think anybody'd be ashamed," said he, "to let things go to wrack an' ruin this way." The paths were thick with weeds. Faithful sweet-william and phlox had evidently struggled for years and barely held their own against misfortune, and bouncing-bet was thrifty. But others of the loved in old-time gardens had starved and died. "You used to have the handsomest canterbury-bells anywhere round," said Jim. He spoke seriously, as if it pained him to find things at such a pass. "Don't look as if you'd sowed a seed sence nobody knows when. Where's your pinies?"

Sophy turned toward the high board-fence that ran from the exact middle of the house down through the garden.

"Over there," she said.

"Over where?"

"In her part."

"Her part o' the place? What you been an' cut it up this way for?"

If Gardener Jim had ever heard of the feud that separated the two sisters he had apparently forgotten it, and Sophy, knowing his reputed state, felt no surprise.

"She lives in t'other part o' the house," she vouchsafed cautiously.

"Well," he grumbled, "that's no reason, as I see, why you should ha' gone an' sliced up the gardin." He gave one more estimating look at the forlorn waste. "Well, I'll be over in the mornin'."

"You needn't," Sophy called after him. "I don't want any gardenin' done," she cried the louder; but Jim paid no attention.

He was at the other gate now, leading into Eliza's grounds, and there he found Eliza waiting for him. She looked older than her sister. She was thinner, her eyes were sharp, and her chin was square and firm.

"Well," said she, "what is it?"

Jim hardly seemed to see her.

"Where's your pinies?" he asked.

Eliza resolutely refrained from looking at the grassy plot where they sat in their neglected state.

"I dunno 's they're comin' up this year," she returned speciously.

"Yes, they be, too," said Jim, with vigor. He had gone straight over to the spot where the juicy red-brown stalks were pushing up among the grass. "Well, if I don't git round this fall an' feed up them pinies I sha'n't have a wink o' sleep all winter."

Eliza had followed him, and now she stood regarding the peonies absently and with almost a wistful curiosity, as if they recalled something she had long forgotten to enjoy.

"I ain't done much in the gardin for a good many year," she said. "I got kinder stiff, an' then I give it up. It's too late to do anything to 'em now, I s'pose?"

"No, it ain't neither," said Jim. "I'll be round to-morrer an' git the grass out an' put suthin' on to make 'em grow. Trouble is, 'tain't so easy to do it in spring as 'tis in the fall, them stalks are so brittle. Don't you touch 'em, now. I'll see to 'em myself."

Eliza followed him to the gate. She was curious, and yet she hardly knew how to put her question with the indifference she sought. As he was taking up his spade, she found the words:—

"What's started you up to come here arter so many years?"

His eyes dropped. The shaggy brows met over them in a defense.

"I kinder thought I would," said he. Then he went soberly back to his own house.

Jim had no garden. Years ago, when his wife had left him, to run away with another man, he had tried to wipe out every sign of his life with her. It was in the early spring of the year when it happened, and the first thing he did, after he came back from the field and found her letter, was to drive the oxen into the home-plot and plough up the garden she had loved. The next day he had harrowed it and sown it down to grass, and then had taken to his bed, where the neighbors found him, and, one and another, nursed him through his fever. When he got up again, he was not entirely the same, but he went about his work, making shoes in the winter and in summer going from house to house to tend the gardens. At first the neighbors had deprecated his spending so much unrewarded time, or even forcing them to resuscitate old gardens against their will; but they had been obliged to yield. He continued his task with a gentle persistency, and the little town became resplendent in gardens—great tangles of cherished growth, or little thrifty squares like patchwork quilts. Jim was not particular as to color and effect. He was only determined that every plant should prosper. Only the Miller sisters he had neglected until to-day, and nobody knew whether he remembered that it was at their house the man had stayed, charming hearts, before he went away again upon his travels, taking the prettiest woman of all with him, or whether it was merely connected with a vague discomfort in his mind.

To-night Jim went into his kitchen and cooked his supper with all a woman's deftness. His kitchen was always clean, though, to the end of keeping it so, he had discarded one thing or another, not imperatively needed. One day he had made a collection of articles only used in a less primitive housekeeping, from nutmeg-grater to fluting-iron, and tossed them out of the window into a corner of the yard. There they stayed, while he added to them a footstool, a crib, and a mixed list of superfluities; then some of the poorer inhabitants of the town, known as "Frenchies," discovered that such treasure was there, and grew into the habit of stealing into the yard twice a week or so and, unmolested, taking away the plunder.

To-night Jim determined to go to bed early. He had more to do next day than could possibly be done. As he sat on the front steps, having his after-supper smoke, he heard the beat of hoofs, and looked up to see Wilfred whirling by. Lily Marshall sat beside him, all color and radiance, in her youthful bloom. As Wilfred looked over at him, with a nod, Jim threw out his arm in a wild beckoning.

"Here!" he called. "Here, you stop a minute!"

Wilfred drew up at the gate, and Jim hurried down to them.

"Which way you goin'?" he called, while Lily looked at him curiously and Wilfred reddened with shame. He was sorry that this new girl come into town must see for herself how queer his uncle was.

"Oh, 'most anywheres!" he answered bluffly. "We're just takin' a ride."

"Well, you go down over Alewife Bridge, then, an' cast a look into Annie Darling's gardin. She's gone away an' left it as neat as wax, an' that gate o' hern swings open sometimes an' them 'tarnal ducks'll git in. You wait a minute. I'll give ye a mite o' wire I kep' to twist round the gate." He sought absorbedly in his pocket and pulled out a little coil. "There!" said he, "that's the talk."

Wilfred accepted the wire in silence, and drove along.

"Who's Annie Darling?" asked Lily with innocence.

She had not been long in the town without hearing that Wilfred had been "going" with Annie Darling before his sudden invitation to her, that night after prayer-meeting, "May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?" Wilfred himself could not have told why he asked that question when Annie, he knew, was only a pace behind. The one thing he could remember was that, when he saw Lily coming, he realized that he had never in his life known there were cheeks so red and eyes so dark.

"Who is she?" asked Lily, again, tightening her veil. It had been blowing against his cheek.

"Annie Darling?" said Wilfred, with difficulty. "Why, she's a girl lives round here. Her mother died last winter, and she's been tryin' to go out nursin'. That's where she's gone now, I guess."

Lily Marshall laughed.

"It's a funny name," she said. "I should think folks'd turn it round and make it 'Darling Annie.'"

Wilfred felt a hot wave sweeping over him, the tide of recollection.

"Well," said he, "I guess they have—some of 'em."

Lily gave him a swift glance, and wondered how much she really liked him. He seemed "pretty country" sometimes beside the young hardware man who was writing her from the West. But she was one to "make things go," and she talked glibly on until they had crossed Alewife Bridge and Wilfred drew up before a gray house with a garden in front, marked out in little prim beds defined by pebbles, and all without a weed. The iris, purple and yellow, seemed to be holding banners, it was so gay, and the lilacs were in bloom. He left the reins in Lily's hands, and stood a moment at the gate, glancing at the beds. Then he went inside, tried the front door, and shut a blind that had failed to catch, and after a second frowning look at all the beds, came out and wired the gate.

"Well," said Lily, as they drove away, "ain't you good, takin' all that trouble!"

Wilfred frowned again.

"I don't like to see things go to wrack and ruin," he remarked.

"How's she look?"

"How's who look?"

"Annie Darling."

"I can't tell how folks look," said Wilfred. He spoke roughly, and she glanced at him in a calculated show of surprise. "Why, you've seen her. She was at the meetin' the night I walked home with you."

"Was she?" said Lily. "Well, I never noticed the folks here very much till I begun to get acquainted."

But she had brought back to him a picture he had been forgetting: Annie, standing in her garden, sweet, serious, and so kind. He had hardly thought before of Annie's looks. People never spoke of them when they were recalling her. She was simply a person they liked to live beside.

The next morning Jim was at Mrs. Marshall's before breakfast—almost before light, she thought, because through her last nap she had heard his hoe clicking, and when she went out, there was the track of his wheelbarrow through the dew, and the liberated peonies, free of grass, stood each in its rich dark circle of manure.

A little later the Miller twins saw him coming, and Sophy was at the door awaiting him.

"Don't you want a cup o' tea?" she asked.

Sophy looked quite eager. It seemed to her that, with the garden resurrected, something was going to happen. Jim shook his head.

"I'll dig round them rose-bushes," said he. "Then I'll go an' git some dressin'."

"I'll pay for it," said Sophy. "You sha'n't have that to do."

"It's no consequence," returned Jim indifferently. "I can git all I want out o' Squire's old yard. I pay him for it in the fall, cobblin'. It's no great matter, anyways."

Sophy disappeared into the house, and came out again, hurriedly, with a trowel in her hand.

"I don't know but I'll work a mite myself," she said, "if you was to tell me where 'twas worth while to begin."

"Don't ye touch the spring things," said Jim briefly. He was loosening the ground about the roses, with delicacy and dispatch. "Let it be as it may with 'em this year. Come November, we'll overhaul 'em. You might see if you can git some o' the grass out o' that monkshood over there."

Sophy, in her sun-bonnet, bent over her task, and for an hour they worked absorbedly. Suddenly she looked up, to find herself alone. But there were voices in the other yard. He was working for Eliza. But Eliza was not helping him. She walked back and forth—Sophy could see her passing the cracks in the high board-fence—and once she called to Jim in a nervous voice, "I wisht you'd go away."

Jim apparently did not hear. He went on freeing the peonies.

"No wonder things git pindlin' under this old locust-tree," Sophy heard him grumble. "Throwin' down leaves an' branches every day in the year. Half on 't's rotten. It ought to come down."

"Well," said Eliza, "if it ought to come down, let it come. You know where to find the axe."

Sophy, on the other side of the fence, could hardly bear the horror and surprise of it. She forgot she was "not speaking" to her sister.

"O 'Liza!" she cried piercingly. "That was mother's tree. She set it out with her own hands. I dunno what she'd say."

There was a moment's quiet, and then Eliza's voice came gruffly:—

"You let the tree alone."

But Jim had no thought of touching it. He was working silently at his task. Sophy went into the house, trembling. She had spoken first. But it was to save the tree.

The warm spring days went on, and Annie Darling had not come. Weeds began to devastate her garden, and Wilfred used to look over the fence and wish uncle Jim would do something. Once he spoke to uncle Jim about it, in the way everybody had of making him responsible for the floral well-being of the neighborhood; but Gardener Jim would hardly listen.

"You 'tend to it! you 'tend to it!" he cried testily. "I've got all I can do to git them Miller gals' pieces into shape so 't they can sow a few seeds."

But one morning he sought out Wilfred, mending a gap in his own orchard wall by the road.

"Wilfred," said Gardener Jim, "have you 'tended to Annie's gardin?"

He had laid down his hoe and put up a foot on a stone in good position for talk.

Wilfred dropped his crowbar and came forward.

"Why, no," said he, irritated, he hardly knew why, as if by a call to a forgotten task. "Nobody's asked me to 'tend to it."

Jim stood for a moment looking through the tree-spaces, and then his gaze came back to his nephew, and Wilfred, with a start, realized that he had never before had the chance to look into uncle Jim's eyes. Now he found them direct and rather stern.

"Wilfred," said Gardener Jim, "don't you be a 'tarnal fool."

Wilfred said nothing, but immediately, he could not tell why, he seemed to be looking upon a picture of Annie standing among the flowers in her little plain dress. His heart was beating faster, and he said to himself that, after all, it would be sort of nice if Annie would come home. Gardener Jim was speaking laboriously, as if he dragged out conclusions he had perhaps reached long ago and had not yet compared with any one.

"There's a time for everything. There's a time to graft a tree an' a time to cut it down. Well, it's your time o' life to make a 'tarnal fool o' yourself. Don't ye do it. If you do, like 's not when you're my age you'll be all soul alone, like me, an' goin' round 'tendin' to other folks's gardins."

Wilfred stared at him in wonder.

"I don't know," he found himself saying. "I might fix it, but I guess 'twould be kind o' queer."

Gardener Jim screwed up his face until his eyes were quite eclipsed.

"Queer!" said he. "Nothin' 's queer if you go ahead an' do it an' say nothin' to nobody. What if they do call ye crazed? That's another way to make 'em stan' from under an' let ye go it. There! I've said my say. Ain't that your axe over there by the well? You take it an' come along o' me. I'd ha' brought mine, only I thought mebbe I shouldn't need it till to-morrer. But I guess I shall. I guess I shall."

Wilfred followed him along the road to the Miller house, and there they saw the twins. Sophy, obscured by a sun-bonnet, was on her knees, sowing seeds in a bed Jim had made for her the day before; but Eliza stood quite still among the peonies, looking off down the road.

Gardener Jim took his way into Eliza's part of the yard. She turned and looked at him uneasily, as if she wondered what exactions he might make to-day. Wilfred thought her face had changed of late. There were marks of agitation upon it, as if she had been stirred by unaccustomed thoughts and then had tried to hide them. Her eyes were troubled.

Gardener Jim walked over to the tall fence.

"Here, Wilfred," said he, "you take your axe an' knock off them boards. The posts'll go too, give 'em a chance. They're pretty nigh rotted off."

Eliza came awake.

"Don't you touch my fence!" she called. "Don't you so much as lay a finger on it."

Wilfred gave her a compliant look.

"You can't do that, you know," he said, in an undertone, to Gardener Jim. "It's their fence. They don't want it down."

Gardener Jim made no answer. He took the axe from Wilfred's hand and dealt the fence a stroke, and then another, and at every one it seemed as if something fell. Eliza strode over to him, and, without reason, stood there. Sophy left her seed-sowing on the other side and came also, and she, too, watched the boards falling. The women were pale and their eyes showed terror, whether at the unchained power of the man or at the wonder of life, no one could have told.

Wilfred sauntered away to the old apple-tree, and began picking off twigs here and there, to drop them on the grass.

Gardener Jim threw down the axe at last and wiped his forehead.

"Where you want them boards piled?" he asked Eliza briefly.

"Down there by the wood-shed." Her voice trembled. "They'll make good kindlin'."

Over the space where two or three sound posts were standing, she spoke to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to break the web of years.

"You better have some o' them boards."

"Mebbe I had," said Sophy.

"Here, Wilfred," called Gardener Jim. "You pile them boards an' I'll see if I can't loosen up the dirt a mite round this old phlox. Anybody must be a 'tarnal fool to build up a high board-fence an' cut off the sun from things when they're tryin' to grow."

Sophy looked timidly at her sister.

"I s'pose 'tis foolish to try to have anything if you don't take care on 't," she said.

Eliza cleared her throat and answered with the same irrelevance:—

"He's fixed up the pinies real nice. See 'f you remember which the white one was."

Sophy stepped over the dividing line, and the two sisters walked away to the peony settlement. Gardener Jim touched Wilfred on the arm.

"You go along," said he. "I'll finish here. You 'tend to Annie's gardin. I hove a trowel over the fence there this mornin'. You go an' git up some o' them weeds."

Wilfred nodded in unquestioning compliance. As he hesitated then for a moment, watching the sisters, and wondering what they were talking about, Eliza raised her hand and brushed a leaf from Sophy's shoulder. Then they went on talking, but apparently of the garden, for they pointed here and there in a fervor of discovery. Wilfred turned with a rush and went off to Annie Darling's.

He found the trowel under the fence, as Gardener Jim had prophesied, and he worked all day, with a brief nooning at home. The garden was full of voices. Here was a plant he had driven ten miles to get for her; here were the mint and balm she loved. It seemed to him, as the hours went by, that he was talking with her and telling her many things—confessions, some of them, and pleas for her continued kindliness. When he had finished, all but carrying away his pile of weeds, he heard a voice at the gate. It was Lily, under a bright parasol, her face repeating its bloom.

"Well, I never!" she called. "You goin' to turn gardener, same as your uncle did?"

Wilfred took off his hat, to feel the air, and went forward toward her. He was not embarrassed. She seemed to him quite a different person from what she had before.

"I've just got it done," said he, with a perfect simplicity. "Don't it look nice?"

Lily had flushed, and, he thought with surprise, she looked almost angry. But she laughed with the same gay note.

"Been doin' it for Annie Darling?" she asked. "For darling Annie?"

"Yes," said Wilfred, "I've been doin' it for Annie."

"Mercy! how hot it is!" said Lily, "Seems if there wasn't a breath of air anywhere. I must get home and see if I can find me a fan."

She was rustling away, but Wilfred did not look after her. He was too busy.

When the weeds had all been carried away, he stood looking at the orderly garden with something like love for it in his heart. And then the gate clicked and Annie came in and up the path. There was a strange, wistful radiance in her face, as if she had chanced upon an undreamed-of joy. It was like the home-coming of a bride. Wilfred strode over the beds and put his arms about her.

"O Annie!" he said. "I'm glad you've come!"

At six o'clock they were still in the garden, talking, though she had opened the house, and the smoke was coming out of the chimney from the fire boiling the water for their tea. Gardener Jim, going home from his work, came up to the fence and leaned on it, eying the garden critically.

"Well, Wilfred," said he, "you've done a good day's work."

The youth and maid came forward. His arm was about her waist and her cheeks were pink.

"How'd you leave the twins?" asked Wilfred.

Gardener Jim looked off into the road vista, and shook all over, mirthlessly.

"I heerd 'em say they were goin' to have flapjacks for supper," said he gravely, "an' fry 'em in Sophy's part." His eyes came back to Annie and studied her for a moment. Then he spoke abruptly. "I'm goin' to give you suthin', Annie—that set o' flowered chiny. It's all there is left in the house that's wuth anything. 'Twas my mother's, an' her mother's afore her, an' there ain't a piece missin'. When you git ready for it, Wilfred here he'll come round an' pack it up."



THE SILVER TEA-SET

Ann Barstow stood at the kitchen table, rubbing her silver tea-set. The house was poor and old, but very clean, and Ann—a thin little eager body—seemed to fit it perfectly. Her strong hands moved back and forth as if she were used to work and loved it for its own sake; but there were other things she loved, and the days that summer seemed to her fuller of life and motion than they had been since she was young. She had lived alone in this little clearing, backed by pine woods, for over thirty years, and every sound of sighing or falling branch was familiar to her, with every resinous tang. Ann thought there was no place on earth so fitted for a happy life as a curving cross-road where people seldom came; but her content increased this summer when young Jerry Hamlin began building a large house across the road, a few rods below her gate, to live there with his wife. When Ann heard the news, she was vaguely agitated by it. For a time it seemed as if something were about to invade her calm. But as the house went up, she began to find she liked the tapping of hammers and the sound of voices never addressed to her. When Jerry and his wife came to look at things, as they did nearly every day, and threw her a hearty word or a smile, she liked them, too, and it came to her that her old age was to be the brighter for company.

To-day the house was still and empty; she missed the workmen, and polished the harder, to take off her mind. A heavy step was at the door. She knew at once who it was: Mrs. John C. Briggs, walking slowly because her "heft" was great, and blooming with good-will all over her large face, framed in its thin blond hair.

"Come in," called Ann. "Set right down. I won't leave off my work. I'm all over this 'ere polishin' stuff."

Mrs. John C. sank into a seat, and devoted the first few moments to breathing.

"Well," said she, "I heard the workmen was off to-day; so I thought I'd poke in an' see the new house."

"Yes," said Ann, "they had to wait for mortar. It's goin' to be a nice pretty place, ain't it?"

"Complete. Well, I should think you'd be rejoiced to have neighbors, all alone as you be."

Ann smiled.

"I never see a lonesome minute," she said. "There's everything goin' on round in these woods. The birds an' flyin' things are jest as busy as the hand o' man, if ye know how to ketch 'em at it. Still, I guess I've got to the time o' life when I shall kinder enjoy neighbors."

"Ain't you never afraid?"

"I guess there's nothin' round here that's wuss'n myself," returned Ann, proffering the ancient witticism with a jocose certainty of its worth. "I ain't very darin', neither. Not much like father, I ain't, nor what brother Will used to be. Either o' them'd face Old Nick an' give him as good as he sent."

"Well, all I can say is, folks can't be too near for me. What would you do if you should be sick in the night?"

"I dunno," said Ann gayly. "Set down an' suck my claws, I guess, an' wait till daylight. I can't think o' nothin' else." She had finished her polishing and set back the silver, to eye it with a critical and delighted gaze. Then she washed her hands at the sink, and brought out a fine white napkin from the high-boy, and spread it on a little table between the windows. "I dunno but I'm dretful childish," she said, "but arter I've got it all rubbed up, I keep it here in sight, a day or two, it ketches the sun so. Then I set it away in the best-room cluzzet."

"It's real handsome," said Mrs. John C. "How many pieces be there? This is the whole on 't, as I remember it."

"Jest as you see it. Yes, 'tis handsome. Mother set the world by it."

"I dunno but I'd ruther have the wuth on 't," said Mrs. John C., as she had said many times before.

"Well," agreed Ann, "I dunno but father would. He wa'n't doin' very well that year. I was a little mite of a thing then, an' I remember it all as if 'twa'n't but yesterday. Father come in, an' he says: 'Well, I guess I've saved the judge a pretty good smash-up. That span o' colts run away down the river road.' 'Who's in the carriage?' says mother. 'He drivin' himself?' 'No,' says father. 'He'd jest lifted Annie in, an' there was a paper blew along the road, an' they started.' 'Annie?' says mother, 'that little mite? He don't deserve to have a child. Why, father,' says she, lookin' up over her glasses,—mother had near-sighted eyes,—'your clo's are all tore off o' you, an' there's your hand all bleedin'.' Father begun to wash himself up at the sink, an' while he stood there, in walked the judge. He was white as a cloth. 'Barstow,' says he, 'you name anything you want that's in my power to git ye, an' you shall have it.' 'Twas a pretty hard year for father, as I told ye, but he never asked favors from nobody. I can see jest how he looked when he turned round an' answered. Father was a real handsome man. 'Much obleeged, judge,' says he. 'I don't want nothin' I can't git for myself.' The judge looked kinder hurt, but he turned to mother. 'Mis' Barstow,' says he, 'can't you think o' some kind of a keepsake you'd like?' Mother spoke up as quick as a wink. 'I want a little mite of a silver pitcher for cream,' says she. 'I see one when I was a little girl.' 'You shall have it,' says the judge; an' 'twa'n't a week afore this set come, all marked complete. I never see anybody quite so tickled as mother was; an' father he kinder laughed. He couldn't help it, to think how she got ahead of him."

"Well," said the visitor again, "it's as handsome as ever I see." She got slowly on her feet. "There! I guess I must be movin' along. We're goin' up to the street right arter dinner, an' I must have it early. Don't you want to send?"

"I'd like some molasses."

"Well, we'll drive this way an' call an' git the jug. Come over an' see us, won't you?"

"Yes, I will. You come again."

When she was gone, Ann, under the suggestion of an early dinner, set about getting her own. She had some calf's head from the day before, and she warmed it up with herbs. The kitchen smelled delightfully, and as she set out the food on her bare table, always scoured white to save the use of a cloth, she felt the richness of her own comfortable life. She ate peacefully, sitting there in the sun and watching her shining silver, and just as she was finishing there came a knock at the door.

"Walk right in," called Ann; but as nobody responded, she got up and opened the door herself. A young man stood on the broad stone, shabby, dust-covered, and with a tired face. The face was sullen, too. He looked as if life had been uncivil to him and he hated it. Ann felt a little shock, like a quicker heart-beat. It was in some subtle way like the face of her brother Will, who had died in his reckless youth.

"Gi' me a bite o' suthin' to eat," he said, as if it were a formula he had often used. "I ain't had a meal for a week."

"Massy sakes! yes," said Ann. "Come right in. Here, you set there, an' I'll warm it up a mite. I didn't have no potaters to-day,—I was in a kind of a hurry,—but I guess you can make out with bread."

He took the chair and watched her while she set on the spider again and warmed her savory dish. Ann filled the kettle at the same time. She judged that he might like a cup of tea, and told herself she would sit down and take it with him. But when the food was before him, he addressed himself to it, tacitly rejecting all her attempts to whip up conversation.

"You travelin' far?" asked Ann, over her own cup of tea, when she had skimmed the top of the milk for him.

"Not very."

He frowned a little, and bent to his occupation. His hunger bore out what he had said. He cleared the dishes and drained the teapot. Then he rose, took his hat, and, without a look at Ann, jerked out a "much obliged," and was gone.

"Well," said Ann, smiling to herself ruefully, thinking of to-morrow's dinner, "talk about folks that eat an' run!"

But, washing the dishes and trying meantime to plan her happy afternoon, she could not put away the memory of her brother's eyes and one tumbling lock of hair; whispers from the past were clamorous at her ear. Presently there was the sound of wheels, and Mrs. John C., perched beside her meagre husband, called from the door:—

"Here we be, Ann. Where's your jug? What if you should clap on your bunnit an' ride along to the street?"

She spoke cordially, judging that on such a spring day everybody was better out of the woods and upon the highway.

"No," said Ann. "I got too much to do. I'm goin' into the pines arter some goldthread an' sarsaparil'. 'Most time for spring bitters. But I'm obleeged to ye for takin' the jug."

Half an hour later Ann closed the door behind her and, with a little basket on her arm and a kitchen knife to dig with, wandered away to her dear retreat. There she worked less than she had expected, the sunshine was so beguiling. She found many spring treasures, the sort she came upon year after year, and always with the same delighted wonder. A new leaf or a budding plant was enough to send Ann off into vistas of quiet joy. Spring clouds were thick, when she walked home, in a tumultuous white flock, and she liked them as well as the blue they covered. The earth was very satisfying to Ann. The air had made her hungry, and with a smile at her own haste, she drew out her little table and began to set it.

Suddenly she stopped, as if a hand had grasped her heart. The room was different. A spot of brightness had gone out of it. The silver tea-set was not there. She hurried into the sitting-room, wild with hope that she might have set it away; but the place was empty. Ann went back into the kitchen, and sank down because her knees refused to hold her. Not once did she think of the value of what she had lost, but only as it linked the past to her own solitary days. The tea-set had been a kind of household deity, the memorial of her father's courage and her mother's happiness, a brighter sun of life than any that could rise again. She sat there still; her heart beat heavily.

"Ann!" It was Mrs. John C.'s voice from the wagon. "Come git your jug."

Ann rose and went weakly out.

"There 'tis in the back o' the wagon," said Mrs. John C. "John'd git out, but the colt's possessed to start, an' I don't like to be left with the reins. Mercy, Ann! what's the matter o' you? You feel sick?"

Ann had dragged out the heavy jug, but there was no strength in her lean arms, and she swayed almost to the ground.

"No," she said, in a dull quiet, "I ain't sick; my silver tea-set's gone."

"Gone! gone where?"

"I don't know," said Ann, in the same despairing way, "unless somebody's stole it."

"John, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. John C., in high excitement. "That silver tea-set's gone. It's the one Ann sets her life by, an' it's wuth I dunno what. Can't you do suthin'?"

John C. looked about him with a vague solemnity.

"Anybody could git into these woods," he said, "an' you'd have hard work to find out where."

"Hard work!" repeated Mrs. John C., in extreme scorn. "I guess 't'll be hard work, but so's a good many things. Don't set there talkin'. Don't you worry, Ann! We'll stir up the neighbors, an' 'f your tea-set's anywheres above ground, we'll have it back, or I'll miss my guess. Come, John, come. Le' 's git along."

Power and vengeance breathed from all her portly frame, and so they drove away, she even, as Ann saw, in her dull bewilderment, putting out a hand to shake the whip in its socket, and John C. holding in the plunging colt.

Ann wearily tugged in the molasses-jug and put it in its place. Then she sat down by the window, trembling, not to think over what had happened, but to bear her loss as she might. From the first moment of discovering it, she had had no hope. Tragic things of this sort were strangers to her simple life, and now that one had come, she knew no depth of experience to draw from. Sickness she could bear, or death if it should come, because they were factors of the common lot; but it had never occurred to her that so resplendent a thing as a silver tea-set could belong to any one and then be reft away.