As this noble sentence came hurtling through the door I felt poor and disheartened. Never could I hope to reach such a height. And here was Gibbs washing dishes and tossing off those things without a thought. Hunka-munka's reply was lost on us. Like many persons of defective hearing, she had the habit of speaking low, but I do not think her remarks were in the gaudy class of her associate's.

Their discussions were not entirely of Tolstoy and Kipling. There was a neighborhood library and they took books from it—books which I judge became more romantic as the weeks went by. I judge this because Gibbs grew more careful in the matter of dress, and when the days became pleasanter the two walked down to the bridge across the brook and looked over into the water, after the manner of heroes and heroines in the novels of Mrs. Southworth and Bertha M. Clay.

What might have been the outcome of the discussions, the dish-washings, the walks, the leanings over the bridge at the trysting-place, we may only speculate now. For a time the outlook for this "romance of real life" seemed promising, then came disillusion. Gibbs, alas, had a bent which at first we did not suspect, but which in time became only too manifest. It had its root in a laudable desire—the desire to destroy anything resembling strong drink. Only, I think he went at it in the wrong way. His idea was to destroy it by drinking it up. He miscalculated his capacity. It took no great quantity of strong waters to partially destroy Gibbs, and at such times he was neither literary nor romantic, no fit mate for Hunka-munka, who had a tidy sum in savings laid away and did not wish to invest it in the destroying process. I do not know what she said to him, at last, but there came a day when he vanished from our sight and knowledge, and the kitchen after dinner was silent. I suppose the change was too much for Hunka-munka, for she saddened and lost vigor. Her deep-dish pies became savorless, the whipped cream smeary and sad of taste. She went the way of all cooks, and if it had not been spring, with the buds breaking and the birds calling and the trout leaping in the brook, we should have grieved as over a broken song.



CHAPTER SEVEN

I

We planted a number of things



The whistle of a bird means spring; the poking through of the skunk-cabbage in low ground, the growing green mist upon the woods. But there is one thing that has more positive spring in it than any of these—more of the stir and throb of awakening, something identified with that earliest impulse that prompted some remote ancestor to make the first garden. I mean the smell of freshly turned earth with the sun on it. Nothing else is like that; there is a kind of madness in it. Elizabeth said it was a poem. It is that and something more—a paean, a marching song—a summons to battle.

Luther Merrill came up to plow the space back of the barn. When he had turned up a furrow or so to the warm April sun, and I got a whiff of it, reason fled. I began capering about with a rake and a hoe, shouting to Elizabeth to bring the seeds—all the seeds—also the catalogues, so that we might order more. Why, those little packages were only a beginning! We must have pounds, quarts, bushels. And we must have other things—sweet-potatoes, for instance, and asparagus—we have overlooked those.

Elizabeth came, and was bitten by that smell, too, but she partially kept her balance. She was in favor of the asparagus and sweet-potatoes, but she said she thought we had better plant what we had of the other things and see how far they would go, before ordering more. She said the seed-houses would probably have enough to go around even a week or so later, and we could use what we had on hand in making what the catalogues referred to as the "first sowing." I was not entirely satisfied, but I submitted. I was too much excited, too glad, to oppose anything. Luther Merrill plowed around and around, and then harrowed and cross-harrowed, while we sorted the yellow packets and picked the earliest things and were presently raking and marking on beds and rows, warm with the fever of tillage.

We did not always agree as to the order of planting. In our small commuter garden we had been restricted by space limitations and had fallen into the habit of planting rows a good deal closer together than the directions on the packets said—an economy of ground, but not of toil. I had frequently weeded the beds, and had found that my feet were not suited to working between rows six inches apart, while even a baby-sized hoe had to be handled with great care. I said, now that we had the space, we would separate our rows of beets and radishes and salad full ten to fourteen inches, as advised by the authorities who had written the package directions, and thus give both the plants and the gardener more room.

But Elizabeth had acquired the economy habit. She declared that such rows gave more room for the weeds and that it was too bad to waste the rich ground in that way. I had to draw the most pathetic picture of myself bending over in the hot sun, working with a toy hoe, and pulling weeds with my fingers, through long July days, to effect a compromise. Experience had taught me that this was the best way to get concessions from Elizabeth. Little could be gained by polemic argument. Besides, it was dangerous. She would resign, and a good deal more than half the joy would go out of that precious employment if I was left to finish it alone. Women are so volatile. It is their main attraction.

The Joy helped us. That is, she had a little hoe and insisted on digging with it in the very places where we were raking and marking and sowing and patting down the fragrant earth that was presently to wax green with fruitfulness. She was not satisfied to go off in a remote corner and make a garden of her own. She was strong for community life, and required close watching. It was necessary, at last, to let her plant a crooked little row without direction or artistic balance. Then she suddenly remembered that she was not a gardener, but a horse, and plowed and harrowed back and forth across the mellow ground.

We planted a number of things that first day of our gardening in Brook Ridge—long rows of lettuce and radishes and pease—the last named two kinds, the bush and dwarf varieties. Pease cannot be sown too early, nor the other things, for that matter. I have known the ground to freeze solid after lettuce and radishes had begun to sprout, without serious resulting damage. We put in some beets, too, and some onions, but we postponed the corn and bean planting. There is nothing gained by putting those tender things in too early. Even if they sprout, they do not thrive unless the weather is really warm, while a light frost lays them low. More than once I have tried very early corn-planting, but never with much result. Once I had quite a patch of it up about three inches high when the wind suddenly went to the north and it was certain that the night would bring frost. I gathered up all the old cans and boxes and hats on the premises and covered every hill of it. That was a good scheme, and most of my corn survived, but six weeks later, when it was green and waving, a neighbor's cow got in and ate it to the last piece. No, fate is against early corn-planting.

We had seed enough for all we wanted to plant that first day, and a good deal more than enough of some things. It's remarkable how many lettuce seeds there are in a buff packet. I sowed and sowed without being able to use up two packets. I don't see how they can raise and gather so many for five cents. It was the same with most of the other things. I did not need to reorder, and by night I did not particularly want to. It had been a pretty long day of raking and digging and patting down, and I had got over some of the intoxication of the earth smell. Also, I was lame. I could see that tending a garden of the size we had planned—along, say, in July—was going to be a chore. No one as yet had come to replace our ex-domestic staff: if no one came that chore would fall to me. In the gray of the evening my enthusiasm was at rather low ebb. It was all I could do to make out an order for asparagus and sweet-potato plants. A cool, quiet bed, in a spring land where frogs are peeping in the moist places, is sweet after such a day.

II

Out of the blue

We were not permanently abandoned, however. Bella and Gibbs, our literary forces, were presently replaced by Lena and William. Lena and William were not literary. William was just plain Tipperary, and Lena was a Finn. I extracted Lena one day from a "Norsk Employment Agency," selecting her chiefly for her full-moon smile and her inability to speak any English word. The smile had a permanent look, and I reasoned that an inability to speak English would be a bar to her getting away. We should not mind it much ourselves. Having had everything from a Pole to a Patagonian, we were experts on sign language, and rather favored it after the flow of English we had just survived. I personally conducted Lena to the train and landed her safely at Brook Ridge.

William came to us out of the blue. One morning I drew a tin pail of water, bright and splashing from the well, and turned to pour a little of it into the birds drinking-trough, a stone hollowed out at the top. I did not do so, however, for a good reason—a man was sitting on the stone. He had not been there a moment before, and I had heard no sound. He was gaunt, pale, and dilapidated, and looked as if he had been in a sort of general dog fight. He had a wild cast in his eyes and was in no way prepossessing. His appearance suggested a burglar on sick-leave.

I confess I was startled by this apparition. I set down the pail rather weakly.

"Why, good morning!" I said.

He replied in a high-keyed Irish intonation, at the moment rather feeble in volume.

"C'u'd ye give a man a bite to eat fer some worrk, now?" he asked.

I was relieved. If he had demanded my purse I should not have been surprised. I nodded eagerly.

"Yes, indeed. We need some wood. If you'll cut a little, I'll see that you have some breakfast. You'll find the wood-pile and the ax down there by the barn."

He rose by a sort of slow unfolding process, and I was impressed by his height. I gave him some specifications as to the wood needed, and he was presently swinging the ax, though without force. He lacked "pep," I could see that, and as soon as the food was ready I called him. He ate little, but he emptied the pot of hot coffee in record time. Then he came down to where I was trimming some rose-bushes.

"W'u'd ye let me lie a bit on the hay?" he said. "Thin I'll do some more of the little shtove-shticks fer yeh. I'm feelin' none too brisk this mornin'."

"Been sick?" I asked.

"Naw, just a trrifle weery with trav'lin' an' losin' of sleep."

Inside I hesitated. It was probably overtime at housebreaking that had told on him. I pointed at the barn, however.

"All right," I said, "take a nap—only, don t smoke in there."

He vanished, and some three hours later when I had forgotten him I suddenly heard a sound of great chopping. Our guest had reappeared at the wood-pile, transformed. He was no longer pale and listless. His face was ruddy—in fact, tanned. The cast in his eye had taken on fire. Every movement was of amazing vigor and direction. The wood-pile was disappearing and the little heap of "stove-sticks" growing in a most astonishing way. I called Elizabeth out to see.

"If coffee and a nap will make him do that." I said, "we'd better give him dinner and get enough wood to last all summer." I went down there. "What is your name?" I asked.

"William—William Deegan."

"Well, William, you seem to understand work. Come up to dinner presently, and if you want to go on cutting this afternoon I'll pay you for it."

He came, and there was nothing the matter with his appetite this time. Ham and eggs, potatoes, beans, corn-bread, pie—whatever came went. William was the apostle of the clean plate. Reflecting somewhat on the matter, I reached the conclusion (and it was justified by later events) that William had perhaps been entertaining himself with friends the night before—during several nights before, I judge—and was suffering from temporary reaction when he had appeared on our horizon. Coffee and a nap had restored him. He was quick on recovery, I will say that.

You never saw such a hole in a wood-pile as he made that afternoon. When I went down to settle with him and announce supper he was still in full swing, apparently intending to go on all night.

"William," I said, "you're a boss hand with an ax."

"Well, sur," said William, his Celtic timbre pitched to the sky, "if I could be shtayin' a day or two longer I'd finish the job fer ye."

Was this a proposition to rob the house and murder us in our beds? I looked at the wood-pile and at William. There was something about their intimate relations that had an honest look. I remembered the extensive garden that would have to be hoed in July.

"Where would you go from here?" I said.

"I don't know, sur. I'll be lookin' fer a job."

"Do you understand gardening and taking care of a horse and cow?"

"Yes, sur, I do that."

I had an impulse to ask him about his last job, but I checked it. It was a question that could lead to embarrassment. I would accept him on his demonstration, or not at all.

"So you want a summer job, at general farm-work?"

"Yes, sur, I do."

"Well, William, you've found one, right here."

Even after the lapse of a dozen years I cannot write of William without a tugging at the heart. We never knew his antecedents—never knew where behind the sky-line he had been concealed all those years before that morning when he appeared, pale and unannounced, at the well. We got the impression, as time passed, that he had once been married and that he had at some time been somewhere on a peach-farm. With the exception of certain brief intervals—of which I may speak later—he remained with us three years, and that was as much as we ever knew, for he talked little, and not at all of the past. His face value was certainly not much, and some of his habits could have been improved, but a more faithful and honest soul than William Deegan never lived.

III

"Ah, the bonny cow!"

We had acquired Mis' Cow a few weeks before William's arrival. It was partly on account of the milk that we wanted her, partly because there was an empty stall next to Old Beek's and we thought she would be company for him, partly because we wanted a cow in the landscape—a moving picture of her in the green pasture across the road—finally (and I believe principally) because we have a mania for restoring things and Mis' Cow looked as if she needed to be restored.

She was owned by a man who was moving away—moving because he had not made a success of chicken-farming by book, and still less of Mis' Cow. He was not her first owner, nor her second, nor her third. I don't know what his number was on her list of owners, but I know if he had kept her much longer he would have been her last one. More than once we had bought the mere frame of a haircloth couch, and taken an esthetic pleasure in having it polished and upholstered, and made into a thing of beauty and service. It was with this view that we acquired Mis Cow, who at the moment was a mere frame with a patchy Holstein covering and a feebly hanging tail. We gave thirty-five dollars for her, and the man who was moving because he had not made a success of chickens threw in a single buggy that broke down the week after he left.

We consulted Westbury on the matter of Mis' Cow's past history, and it was the only time I ever knew W. C. Westbury to be inexact as to the age and habits of any animal in Brook Ridge. He said he had always known her as a good milker, but that she had been unfortunate of late years in her owners. He couldn't remember her age, but he didn't think it was enough to hurt her. My opinion is that he could have given her exact birthday and record had he really tried, but that kindness of heart prompted him to encourage a trade that might improve her fortunes. I suspect that they had played together in childhood.

We managed to get Mis' Cow up the hill and into her stall, where we could provide her with upholstery material. The little pasture across the road was getting green and she presently had the full run of it. The restoring progress began, as it were, overnight. If ever an article of furniture paid a quick return in the matter of looks, she did. She could never be a very fat Mis' Cow—she was not of that build. But a few days of good food and plenty of it certainly worked wonders. She filled out several of the most alarming hollows around her hips and along her ridge-pole, she seemingly took on height and length. She grew smooth, even glossy; her tail no longer hung on her like a bell-cord, but became a lithe weapon of defense that could swat a fly with fatal precision on any given spot of her black-and-white area. It was only a little while until we were really proud to have her in the landscape, and the picture she made grazing against the green or standing in the apple shade was really gratifying. When the trees were pink and white with bloom and Mis' Cow rested under them, chewing in time to her long reflections, we often called one another out to admire the pastoral scene. A visiting friend of Scotch ancestry was moved to exclaim, "Ah, the bonny cow!"

Then there was the matter of milk—she certainly justified Westbury's reputation in that respect. From a quart or two of thin, pale unusable fluid her daily dividend grew into gallons of foaming richness that became pitchers of cream and pounds of butter; for Elizabeth, like myself, had known farming in an earlier day, and rows of milk-pans and a churn went with her idea of the simple life. All day Mis' Cow munched the new grass, and night and morning yielded a brimming pail. She was a noble worker, I will say that.

But there was another side to Mis' Cow—a side which Westbury forgot to mention. Mis' Cow was an acrobat. When she had been on bran mash and clover for a few weeks she showed a decided tendency to be gay—to caper and kick up her heels—to break away into the woods or down the road, if one was not watching. But this was not all—this was mere ordinary cow nature, which is more foolish and contrary than any other kind of nature except that which goes with a human being or a hen. I was not surprised at these things—they were only a sign that she was getting tolerably restored, according to specifications. But when one day I saw her going down the road, soon after I had turned her into the pasture and carefully put up the bars, I realized that she had special gifts. Stone walls did not a prison make—not for her. Elizabeth and I rounded her up and got her back into the pasture, and from concealment I watched her. She fed peacefully enough, for some time, then, doubtless believing herself unobserved, she took a brief promenade along the wall until she came to what looked like a promising place, and simply walked over it, like a goat.

We herded her into the barn, and I engaged a man to put a string of wire above the wall. That was effective as long as it was in repair. But it was Mis' Cow's business to see that it did not remain in repair permanently. She would examine it during idle moments, pick out a weak spot in the entanglement, and pull it flat with her horns. Or where the wall was broad enough at the top she would climb up and walk it, just for exercise, stepping over when she got ready. If she could have been persuaded to do those things to order I could have sold her to a circus. It was necessary to reinforce the wire and add another string.

Even that was not always a cure. I came home from the city one night, after a hard day. Elizabeth and the Joy, with Old Beek, had met me at the station, and as we drove up the hill in the dim evening I said how glad I was to get home, and that Elizabeth had milked, so that I could drop into a chair and eat my supper and rest, the minute I entered the house. We reached the top of the hill just then, and a dim gray shadow met and passed us in the velvet dusk. It was Mis' Cow, starting out to spend the night. She was moving with a long, swinging trot, and in another second I was out and after her.

She had several rods' start and could run downhill better than I could, especially in the dark. It seemed to me that every step I went plunging out into space. My empty stomach became demoralized, the blood rushed to my head. "Gosh dern a cow, anyway!" By the time we had reached Westbury's and started up the next hill I had made up my mind to sell her—to give her away—to drive her off the premises. Some people were standing in front of the next house and they laughed as we went by, we being about neck and neck at the time. Westbury was in that crowd, and for the moment our friendship was in grave danger. But then we came to the house of the man who had made a failure of book chicken-farming, and she darted in. She had remembered it as her home and wanted to return to it. Imagine wanting to go back to such a home!

Westbury came, and we got a rope on her and led her uphill. I suppose I felt better in the morning, and it was about this time that William arrived on the scene. William loved Mis' Cow and did not mind chasing her up and down the road and through the bushes, though sometimes during the summer, when he had had a hard day with her, and our windows were open, we could hear him still hi-hi-ing and whooping in his sleep, chasing Mis' Cow through the woods of dream.

IV

Strawberries and trout. How is that for a combination?



I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic summer, and, on the whole, a successful one. Our early garden grew—also the second planting and the third. William Deegan made it his business to see that they did. I realized presently that my special forte lay in directing a sizable garden like that rather than in performing the actual labor, especially when June arrived and the sun began to approach the perpendicular and take on callithump. You probably don't know what callithump is, but you will find out if you undertake to hoe sod-ground potatoes in July. It has something to do with brazen trumpets and violence.

I became acquainted with callithump when I straightened out the asparagus-bed. The weeds had got a master start there, and the feeble feathery asparagus shoots were quite overtopped and lost. I said the job required a microscopic eye and a delicate hand. I would set the asparagus-bed in order myself.

It is surprising how much ground a hundred asparagus roots can cover. Elizabeth had superintended their planting, during a period when I had been absent, and, remembering my mania for having things far apart, she had let herself go in the matter of space. She had made it rich, too, and the weeds just loved it. Some of them were up to my waist. I said they would have to be pulled by hand and I would get up in the cool of the morning and do it.

It is almost impossible to beat the sun up in June. I was out there at five o'clock, but the sun was already busy and had got the range. By the time I had pulled half-way down one row I could feel the callithump working. Also something else. We claimed to have no mosquitoes in Brook Ridge, so it could not have been those. Whatever it was kept me swearing steadily, and pawing and slapping and sweating blood. When I had finished a row I crept in, got some fresh clothes and a towel, and made a dash for the brook. I had cleaned out a special pool behind the ice-house, and built a little dressing-platform. In less than a minute I was in the water, looking up at the sky and hearing the birds sing. Talk about luxury! After breakfast I took Elizabeth out to show her my progress.

"It looks nice," she said, "and how easily you did it!"

It took me four memorable mornings to finish the asparagus-bed, and, proud as I was of the job, I resigned, after that, in favor of William. The brazen trumpets of the sky even at high noon could not phase W. Deegan. Often in July I have sat in the maple shade, with pride watching him carry out my directions concerning weeds and potato-bugs. I admired and honored William. I have the greatest respect for honorable toil, but even more for callithump.

Sometimes in the early morning I went trout-fishing. There is more fascination and less waste tissue in that. I would creep down while the house was still and get my rod and basket, and take a sheltered lane that was like a green tunnel through the woods, where the birds were just tuning up for a concert, then out across the "bean-lot," to strike the brook at about the head of navigation—for trout.

They were plenty enough and just of the right size—that is to say, eight to eleven inches long—and easy enough to get if one was very careful. You could not cast for them; the brook was too small and brushy for that. You had to use a very short line, and wind it around the end of the rod, and work it through the branches, and then carefully, very carefully, unwind and let the hook drop lightly on the water. Then as likely as not there would be a swift, tingling tug, and, if you were lucky, an instant later you would have a beautiful red-speckled fellow landed among the grass and field flowers, his gay colors glancing in the sun.

The open places also required maneuvering. One does not walk up to the bank and fish for wild trout—not in a stream that is as clear as glass and where every fish in it can see the slightest movement on the bank. To fish such a place is to lie flat on the stomach and work forward inch by inch through the grass, Indian fashion, until the water is in reach. Even then you must not look, but feel, unwinding the line slowly, slowly, until the fly or worm taps the water. Then if you have done it well and the trout is there, and it is June, there will be results—sharp, quick, sudden results that insure the best breakfast in the world—hot fried trout, fresh from a New England brook.

The Joy went with me on some of these excursions. She liked to have me call her early and go tiptoing and whispering about our preparations and to wade off through the dewy grass in her rubber boots, leaving the rest of the house asleep. She generally carried the basket, and was deeply interested in my maneuvers when the cry of the "teacher"-bird and the call of the wood-thrush did not distract her attention. I can still see the grass up to her fat little waist, her comical blue apron, her dimpled round face and the sunlight on her hair. She had a deep pity for the trout, but her sporting instinct was deeper still. Sometimes when there was a slip, and a big shining fellow would go bouncing and splashing back into the brook, she would jump up and down and demand, excitedly:

"Why didn't you catch that one, Daddy? Why didn't you catch him? That was a big, big, big one?" And she walked very proudly when we had six or more to carry back for breakfast.

Strawberries and trout—how is that for a breakfast combination in June? Trout just from the water and strawberries fresh from the garden. We had planted a good patch of strawberries the August of our arrival and they had done wonderfully well for the first year. Often by the time we had come from fishing Elizabeth had been out and filled a bowl, and sometimes even made a short-cake, for we were old-fashioned enough to love short-cake—old-fashioned short-cake made with biscuit dough (not the sweet-cake kind) for breakfast. And breakfast with trout and short-cake—short-cake with cream, mind you!—in New England in June, when the windows open on the grass and the wood-thrushes are calling, is just about as near paradise as you can get in this old world.



CHAPTER EIGHT

I

Fate produced a man who had chickens to sell



With June the Pride and the Hope came home from school. The brook, the barn, Old Beek, and Mis' Cow all had their uses then—also a tent in the yard, a swing, hammock and whatnot. When God made the country He made it especially for children. Burning suns, a weedy garden and potato blight may dismay the old, but such things do not fret the young mind. As long as the brook is cool and the fields are sweet and there is fresh milk and succotash on the table, happy childhood is indifferent to care.



We were given to picnics. Often we packed some food things into a basket and went into the woods and spread them in a shady place. Lena, the Finn, sometimes accompanied these excursions and went quite mad with the delight of them, racing about and digging up flowers and shrubs to plant in the door-yard, fairly whooping it up in joyful Finnish and such English words as she had acquired. I believe the aspect of our woods reminded her of Finland.

Lena was a good soul, that is certain, and measurably instructive. We learned from her how priceless is the gift of good nature, which was the chief thing that kept her with us; also, to eat a number of dishes quite new to us, and that an apple-tree—or perhaps it was an apple, baked or in dumpling—was, in her speech, an "ominy poo." She was not strong on desserts, but she could always fall back on the ominy poo—meaning in a general way the big sweet-apple tree that grew by the barn and was loaded to the breaking-point with delicious fruit. Any baked apple is good, but a big, cold, baked sweet-apple—"punkin sweets," Westbury called them—with cold cream, plenty of it, and a sprinkle of sugar, is about the most blithesome thing in the world. Hurrah for the ominy poo! whether it be the tree, or the fruit, baked or in dumplings. When the strawberry passed and was not, the ominy poo reigned gloriously. I don't know what Lena called certain other dishes that from time to time she tried to substitute—some other kind of poo, maybe—I know we gradually persuaded her away from them into a better way of life.

Sometimes we joined our picnics with the Westburys'—loaded our baskets into a little hand-express wagon, or into the surrey behind Lord Beaconsfield—and these were quite elaborate affairs that required a good deal of preparation and meant a general holiday. More than once we spread long tables on the green of Westbury's shaded lawn that sloped down to the river and the mill, and was a picture-place, if ever there was one. Other days we went over the hills for huckleberries—and came home with pails of the best fruit that grows for pies, bar none. Happy days—days of peace—a true golden age, as it seems now. Will the world, I wonder, ever be so happy and golden again?

* * * * *

We had no intention of embarking in chickens when we settled in Brook Ridge. Neither of us had any love for chickens on foot, and we had no illusions about the fortunes that, according to certain books, could be made from a setting of eggs and a tin hen—an incubator, I mean. Also, our experiment with pigs had cooled us in the matter of live stock for profit.

Still, we did love chickens in their proper place—that is to say, with dumplings or dressing and some of the nice jellies and things which Elizabeth had made during those autumn months of our arrival. It seemed extravagant to have them often; chickens had become chickens since our long-ago early acquaintance with them, when "two bits" had been a fancy price for broilers and old hens. Elizabeth finally conceded that perhaps a few chickens—a very few, kept in a neat inclosure away from the garden—might be desirable. It would be so handy to have one when we wanted it. She even hinted that the sound of a satisfied and reflective hen singing about the barn would add a rural note to our pastoral harmony. Then, of course, there would be the eggs.

Fate produced a man, just at that moment, who had chickens to sell. He had been called away, and would let his flock go cheap—he had about a dozen, he thought, assorted as to age and condition. We could have them for fifty cents each. It seemed an opportunity. William Deegan was instructed to prepare the neat inclosure, which he did with enthusiasm, William being enamoured of anything that was alive.

The man who had been called away had made a poor count of his flock. He arrived with nearly twice as many as he said, but we were in the mood by that time, and took over the bunch. They were not a very inspiring lot. They were of no special breed, but just chickens—a long-legged, roostery set, with a mixture of frazzled hens of years and experience. We said, however, that food and care would improve them. Remember what it had done for Mis' Cow.

"Ye'll be after eatin' thim roosters, prisently," William commented, as we looked at them through the inclosing wire, "before they be gettin' much older. Ye'll be wantin' eggs from the hins."

William's remark seemed wise. We were wanting the eggs, all right, and those ten or twelve speedy-looking roosters ought to go to the platter without much delay. We would feed liberally and begin on the best ones, forthwith.

Still, we did not have chicken that day, nor the next. There is nothing so perverse as the human appetite. Those were not really bad chickens, and in a few days they were much better. If any one of those middle-aged roosters had been brought to us by the butcher we would have paid the usual dollar for it, and, baked and browned and served with fixings, it would have gone well enough, even though a trifle muscular and somewhat resilient.

But somehow this was a different proposition. I don't believe I can explain just why. There was something about the aggregation as a whole that was discouraging. I suspect William's remark that they must be eaten "prisently" had something to do with it. Eating those chickens was not to be an entertainment, a pastime, but a job—a job that increased, for the "old hins" did not lay, or very sparingly—an egg a day being about the average. William brought it in solemnly. We had got to devour that entire flock of chickens, and the thought became daily less attractive. Even our tribe of precious ones, who had always been chicken-hungry before, suddenly became indifferent to the idea of chicken fried, baked, or in fricassee. I said, at last, we would have to have a series of picnics. Anything would taste good at a picnic.

I don't remember how many we used up in that way, but I know the business of getting rid of those chickens seemed interminable. We tried working them off on William and Lena, but even they balked before the end was reached. I have heard it stated that no one can eat thirty quails in thirty days. I don't know about that, but I know that when we tried to put over a dozen chickens on Lena and William in six weeks it was a failure. At last we were reduced to one old hen, who by general consent was made immune. Also free. The garden was too far advanced for her to damage it. The door of the neat wire inclosure was left open for her to go and come at will. There was danger of foxes at night, but we did not shut it. The foxes, however, did not come. Even foxes have to draw the line somewhere. That venerable old lady wandered about the place, pecking and contentedly singing, and in that part we really became fond of her. I think she died at last of old age.

II

I planted some canterbury-bells

I believe our agriculture may be said to have been successful. William was a faithful gardener. His corn, beans, pease, and potatoes were abundant, and all the other good things, whether to eat boiled, raw, or roasted. Our table was almost embarrassed by these riches, which perhaps helped us to weaken on the chicken idea.

I think our favorite staple was corn—green sweet corn, carried directly from the patch to the pot, and from the pot to the table. If you have not eaten it under these conditions you have never really known what green corn should be like. The flavor of corn begins to go the moment it is pulled from the stalk, also the moment it leaves the pot. Cooked instanter, buttered, with salt and pepper, eaten the moment it does not blister your mouth, it is the pride of the garden. Cooked the next day and eaten when it has become cool and flabby, it becomes a reproach. It is different with beans. Beans keep, and, hot or cold or warmed over, they are never to be despised. The heaping platters of corn and the bowls of beans that our family could destroy after a morning of hearty exercise were rather staggering. Then presently the cantaloups came—fragrant, juicy ones, and all the salads, and—oh, well, never mind the list—I have heard of living like a lord, but I can't imagine any lord ever living as near to the sap and savor of life's luxuries as we did.

I must not overlook our rye. By June it was a cloth of gold, and of such elevation that I could barely see over it. There is something stately and wonderful about standing rye, when one is close enough to see the individual stalks. They are so tall and slim that you cannot understand why the lightest wind does not lay them flat. Yet all day long they sway and ripple and billow in the summer wind, and unless the heavy, driving storm comes the ranks remain unbroken to the last and face the sickle in golden dress parade.

Westbury came with a force of men one blazing morning, and the sound of the cutting-machine was a music that carried me back to days when I had followed the reaper in the Mississippi Valley, from the first ray of sunrise to the last ray of sunset, eaten five times a day, drunk water out of a jug under the shock, and once picked up a bundle with a snake in it and jumped fourteen feet, more or less, straight up in the air. It was not that I was afraid, you understand, but just surprised. Snakes nearly always surprise me. I remember once when I was a little boy, on the way to visit a friend about my size, I took a short cut across a little clearing, and was hopping and singing along when I hopped onto something firm that moved twistingly under my bare foot. I did not jump or run that time; I merely opened out my wings and flew. Corn-rows, brush-piles, fences, were as nothing. I sailed over them like a gnat till I reached the big main road. I was not interested in short cuts, after that, and I didn't cross that field again for years. I was not afraid, but I did not wish to be surprised again. I recall another time—

But this is not a snake story. I told Westbury that I could bind as well as ever, and would give them an exhibition of a few rounds. But it was impressively hot and at about the third bundle I remembered an important memorandum I wanted to make, and excused myself. It was quite pleasant in my study, and I kept on making memorandums until by and by Westbury sent the Hope to tell me that they'd like me to come out and give the rest of the exhibition. It was not very considerate of Westbury when I was busy that way, and I ignored his suggestion.

We did not go in for selling seed rye, as I had once contemplated, but I think we might have done so if there had been a demand. Westbury and the men put it into the barn, and later flailed it out on the barn floor, after the manner of Abraham and Boaz and Bildad the Shuhite, beating the flails in time and singing a song that Bildad himself composed. Who would have a dusty, roaring thrashing-machine when one can listen to the beating flails and be back with Boaz and Bildad in the days when the world was new?

* * * * *

Just a word more of our vegetable experiments. For one thing, our asparagus-bed thrived. Those hot mornings I put in paid the biggest return of any early-morning investment I ever made. Each year it came better and better—in May and June we could not keep up with it and shared it with our neighbors. The farm-dweller who does not plant an asparagus-bed as quickly as he can get the ground ready, and the plants for it, makes a grave mistake.

Perhaps I ought to record here that our sweet-potatoes were a success. We were told that they would not grow in New England, but they grew for us and were sweet and plentiful.

The waning of the year in a garden is almost the best of it, I think. Spring with its thrill of promise, summer with its fulfilment—meager or abundant, according to the season—are over. Then comes September and October, the season of cool, even brisk, mornings and mellow afternoons. It is remnant-day in the garden, the time to take a basket and go bargain-hunting on the "as is" counter. Where the carrots have been gathered there are always a few to be found, if one looks carefully, and in the melon-patch there is sure to be one or two that still hold the bouquet of summer, with something added that has come with the first spicy mornings of fall. Also, if one is lucky, he will find along the yellowing rows a few ears of corn, tender enough and sweet enough for the table, with not quite the flavor of July, perhaps, but with something that appeals as much to the imagination, that belongs with the spectral sunlight, the fading stalks and vines, and carries the memory back to that first day of April planting. To bring in a basket, however scanty, of those odds and ends and range them side by side on the kitchen table affords a gratification that is not entirely material, I believe, for there is a sort of pensive sadness in it that I have been told is related to poetry.

* * * * *

I have said little of our flowers, but they were a large part—sometimes I think the largest part—of our happiness. Going back through the summers now, I cannot quite separate those of that first year from those of the summers that followed. It does not matter; sooner or later we had all the old-fashioned things: hollyhocks in clusters and corners, and on the high ground in a long row against the sky; poppies and bleeding-heart, columbine and foxglove, bunches of crimson bee-balm and rows of tall delphinium in marvelous shades of blue. And we had banks of calliopsis and sunflowers—the small sunflowers of Kansas, that bloom a hundred or more to a stalk—and tall phlox whose fragrance carries one back to some far, forgotten childhood. Then there were the roses—the tea-roses that one must be careful of in winter and the hardy climbers—the Dorothy Perkins and ramblers clambering over the walls. As I look back now through the summers I seem to see a tangle of color stretching across the years. It is our garden—our flowers—always a riot of disorder, always a care and a trial, always beloved and glorious.

One year I planted some canterbury-bells—the blue and the white. They are biennials, and bloom the second year. The blue ones came wonderfully, but the white ones apparently failed. I did not plant them again, for I went in mainly for perennials that, once established, come year after year. I tried myosotis, too, but that also disappeared after the second year. Our garden, such as it was, was a hardy garden, where only the fittest survived.

There was an accompaniment to our garden. It was the brook. Nearly always, as I dug and planted, I could hear its voice. Sometimes it rose strong and insistent—in spring, when rains were plenty; sometimes in August when the sky for weeks had been hard and dry, it sank to a low murmur, but it was seldom silent. All the year through its voice was a lilting undertone, and the seasons ran away to the thread of its silver song.

After all, a garden in any season is whatever it seems to its owner. To one who plans and plants it, tends and loves it, any garden is a world in little, a small realm of sentient personalities, of quaint and lovely associations, of anxious strivings and concerns, of battles, of triumphs, and of defeats. To one who makes a garden under compulsion it is merely an inclosure of dirt and persistent weeds, a place of sun and sweat and some more or less perverse and reluctant vegetables that would be much more pleasantly obtained from the market-wagon. There is no personality in it to him, nor any poetry. I know this, because I was once that kind of a gardener myself. It was when I was a boy and had to hoe one every Saturday forenoon, when there were a number of other things I wanted to do. It was almost impossible to study lovingly the miracle of the garden when duty was calling me to play short-stop on the baseball nine that I knew was assembling on the common, with some irresponsible one-gallus substitute in my place. Yet even in those days I loved the fall garden. The hoeing was all done then, the weeds were no longer my enemies. One could dig around among them and find a belated melon, and in the mellow sunlight, between faded corn-rows, scoop out its golden or ruby heart and reflect on many things.

III

And how the family did grow up!

As I look back now, that first year on our abandoned farm seems a good deal like the years that followed it; but it could not have been so, for when I consider to-day's aspect and circumstance I realize that each of our twelve years of ownership furnished events that were to us unusual, some of them, at the time, even startling.

We must have enjoyed a kind of prosperity, I suppose, for we seem always to have been planning or doing something to enlarge the house or improve its surroundings, and quite a good deal of money can be spent in that way. I think it was about the second year that for the sake of light and air we let out three dormer windows on the long roof, and I remember that in order not to make a mistake in their architecture we drove thirty miles one morning to see a house like ours which had owned its windows from the beginning. We loved our old house, you see, and did not wish to do it an injury. I think it was about the same time that we pulled off the plaster from the living-room ceiling and left the exposed beams—old hewn timbers which we tinted down with a dull stain. William Deegan and I stained those beams together, and our friendship ripened during that employment. William had been with us about a year at this period—not steadily, because now and then would come a day when with sadness and averted eyes he would say, "I think I'll be goin' now, for a little while," after which the effacement of William for perhaps a week, followed by his return some morning, pale, delapidated, as on the morning of his first arrival.

In the beginning I had argued, even remonstrated, but without effect. William only said, humbly: "It comes over me to be goin', and I have to do it. I'll be dacent ag'in, whin I get back."

During one such period of absence there came a telephone call from the sheriff of the nearest town of size.

"Do you know a man named William Deegan?"

"We do."

"He is in the calaboose here. His fine and costs amount to five dollars. Do you want to redeem him?"

"We do."

Clearly William's vacation had been unusual, even for him. We sent up the money and William was home that night, more crushed, more pale, more dilapidated than ever. He had worn a new suit away. He returned with a mere rag. We thought this might cure him, but nothing could do that. We could redeem William, but he could not redeem himself. These occasional lapses were the only drawback of that faithful, industrious soul, and we let them go. We had been unable to forgive them in the light-headed, literary Gibbs.

But William here is a digression; I was speaking of our improvements. We decided one year that we must have more flowers—a real garden. We made it on the side of the house where before had been open field—walled in a space where there was an apple-tree, a place large enough to assemble all the things we loved most and that grew with an economy of care. In a little while it was a glorious tangle that we admired exceedingly, and that our artist friends tried to paint.

Another year we converted my study behind the chimney into a pantry, opened it into the kitchen, made the "best room" into a dining-room, and left the long living-room with the big fireplace for library use only. That was a radical change and I had to build me a study over on a cedar slope—a good deal of a house, in fact, where I could gather my traps about me, for with the years my work had somehow invited a paraphernalia of shelves and files, and a variety of other furniture that required room. It was better for a growing-up family, too. With me out of the house, they had more freedom to grow up in, which, after all, was their human right, and the growing-up machinery could revolve as noisily as it pleased without furnishing a procrastinating author an added excuse for not working. No author with a growing-up family should work in his own home. He is impossible enough under even the best conditions.



And how the family did grow up. Why, once when they were home from school I came from the study one day to find a young man in the house—a strange young man, from somewhere in the school neighborhood. I couldn't imagine what he was doing there until I was taken aside and it was explained to me that he was there to see our eldest, the Pride. That little girl, imagine! It is true she was eighteen—I counted, up on my fingers to see—but the Pride! why, only yesterday she was bare-footed, wading in the brook. Somehow I couldn't make it seem right.

IV

And then one eventful day

I suppose it was about that time that we acquired a car—it would be likely to be about that time. 'Most everybody was getting cars, and Lord Beaconsfield, good Old Beek, was getting slower each year and could no longer keep up even with our deliberate progress. Furthermore, I learned to drive the car, in time. It is true I knocked some splinters from the barn, put a crimp in a mud-guard, and smashed another man's tail-light in the process, but nothing fatal occurred, though I found it a pretty good plan to stick fairly close to my new study on the cedar slope if I wanted to keep up with the garage and damage bills. Those bills startled me, at first, and then, like everybody else, I became callous and reckless, and we did without a good many other things in order that the car might not go unshod or climb limpingly the stiff New England hills.

And then at last, one eventful day—a day far back in that happy, halcyon age when ships sailed as freely across the ocean as ferry-boats across the North River and men roved at will among the nations of the earth—one sunny August morning, eight years after the day of our coming, we locked the old house behind us and drove away in the car to a New York pier and sailed with it (the car, I mean, not the pier) to the Mediterranean, and the shores of France. In that fair land, while the world was still at peace, we wandered for more than a year, resting where we chose, as long as we chose, all the more unhurried and happy for not knowing that we were seeing the end of the Golden Age. Oh, those lovely days when we went gipsying along the roads of Provence and Picardy and Touraine! I cannot write of them now, for in to-day's shock of battle they have already become unreal and dreamlike. I touch them and the bloom vanishes. But sometimes when I do not try to write, and only lean back and close my eyes, I can catch again a little of their breath and sweetness; I can see the purpling vineyards and the poppied fields; I can drift once more with Elizabeth and our girls through the wonderland of France.



War came and brought the ruin of the world. It was late in the year when we returned to America, and it was on a winter evening that I drove our car back to its old place in the barn, after its long journeyings by land and sea. Our old house had remained faithful. A fire roaring up the chimney made it home.

We went to Westbury's, however, for the holidays. Westbury with the years had become a prosperous contractor, for Brook Ridge was no longer an abandoned land, but a place of new and beautiful homes. Westbury's prosperity, however, had not made him proud—not too proud to offer us old-time Christmas hospitality at his glowing fireside.

V

Was it the spirit of our garden?

Summer found us back in the old house, almost as if we had not left it. Almost, but not quite. Somehow the world had changed. Perhaps it was just the war—perhaps it was because we were all older—our girls beginning to have lives of their own—because the family unit was getting ready to dissolve.

The dissolving began at last one sunny June day when the Pride left us. It was the young man whom I had noticed around the house a year or two before who took her away. She seemed to prefer to go with him than to stay with us, I could not exactly make out why, but I did not think it best, or safe, to argue the question, and I drove them to the train afterward.

Then the Hope and the Joy got the notion of spending their summers in one of those camps that are so much the fashion now, and at last there came a day that the Hope, who such a little while ago was running care-free and happy-hearted in the sun, bade us good-by and sailed away—sailed back across the ocean to France, an enlisted soldier, to do her part where the world's bravest were battling for the world's freedom.

For us, indeed, the world had changed; we had little need any more for the old house that on a July day twelve years before we had found and made our home. It had seen our brief generation pass; it was ready for the next. And when, one day, there came a young man and his bride, just starting on the way we had come, and seeing the beauty of the spot, just as we had seen it, wanted to own and enjoy it, just as we had owned and enjoyed it, we yielded it to them gladly, even if sorrowfully, for one must give up everything, some time or other, and it is an economy of regret to give to the right person, at the right time.

And now just here I want to record a curious thing. Earlier in these pages I have spoken of planting one year some white canterbury-bells that did not grow, or at least, so far as we could discover, did not bloom. In six seasons we never saw any sign of them, yet on the day we were leaving our house, closing it for the last time, I found on the spot where they had been planted, in full bloom, a stalk of white canterbury-bells! Had the seed germinated after all those years? Was it the spirit of our garden, sprung up there to tell us good-by? Who can answer?



Our abandoned farm is no longer ours. We, too, have abandoned it. Only the years that we spent there remain to us—a tender and beautiful memory. Whatever there was of shadow or misfortune has long since passed, by. I see now all our summers there bathed in mellow sunlight, all the autumns aglow with red and gold, all the winters clean with sparkling snow, all the springs green with breaking buds and white with bloom. If those seasons were not flawless at the time, they have become so, now when they are added to the past.

And I know that they were indeed happy, for they make my heart ache remembering, and it is happiness, and not misery, that makes the heart ache—when it is gone.

THE END