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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 MACMILLAN'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 THE GARDEN 
 OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE
 
 THE GARDEN 
 
 OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 RECORDED BY 
 
 THE GARDENER 
 (Mr*. VUbeAy/r 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1901, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped October, 1901. Reprinted November, 1901; 
 March, May, October, 1902; July, October, 1903; March, 1904; March, 
 June, 1906. 
 
 Special edition, in paper covers, May, June, twice, 1905. 
 
 XortoooS 
 
 J. 8. Gushing & Co. Berwick <fe Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
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 HBoofe belongs to tlje Commuter
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE RETURN i 
 
 II 
 
 CONCERNING GARDENERS. IN GENERAL . . 26 
 
 III 
 CONCERNING GARDENERS. IN PARTICULAR ... 38 
 
 IV 
 THE AMERICANIZING OF PETER SCHMIDT . . 53 
 
 V 
 A RAINY DAY. MORNING 74 
 
 VI 
 
 A RAINY DAY. AFTERNOON 90 
 
 VII 
 
 A BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST ...... 105 
 
 VIII 
 
 SETTING THE SUNDIAL . . . . . * .122 
 
 vii
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 IX 
 
 r/UJtt 
 
 CHIEFLY DOMESTIC I4I 
 
 X 
 
 WINTER. THE GARDEN OF BOOKS . . . .166 
 
 XI 
 
 THE TERRIBLE TEMPTATION 
 
 XII 
 PLANTING ........ 221 
 
 XIII 
 JUNE. OLD ROSES WORTH GROWING . . . .244 
 
 XIV 
 JULY. THE BED OF SWEET ODOURS .... 268 
 
 XV 
 AUGUST. A PLEA FOR A WILD LAWN . . . .291 
 
 XVI 
 SEPTEMBER. THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS . . . 312 
 
 * 334 
 XVIII 
 OCTOBER. THE YEAR'S MIND . . . 347
 
 The /. : ":''.'.'>.< 
 
 Garden of a Commuter's Wife 
 
 i 
 
 THE RETURN 
 
 October 23 (Battle of Leipsic, 1642, according to 
 the Farmers' Almanac. I never could understand 
 the relationship between the astronomy, history, and 
 literature in this volume). To-day I began the plant 
 ing of my garden. The combination of date and deed 
 may seem strange to those who do not know ; but as 
 gardening is the most exacting as well as the most 
 exciting of outdoor sports, one cannot begin too early 
 in the season, and it is really better to begin the sea 
 son before. Neither a garden nor a gardener can 
 be made in one year, nor in one generation even. It 
 takes a fine sort of heredity of air and soil and envi 
 ronment for either; also gardening is the most cheer 
 ful and satisfactory pursuit for women who love 
 outdoors. Field and forest often hold one at bay.
 
 2 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 We may admire, worship, love, but neither advise nor 
 argue with thsrii nor add one cubit to their stature. 
 In a garden ;one's personality can come forth, stick a 
 finger into Nature's pie, and lend a hand in the mak 
 ing of it, besides furnishing many of the ingredients. 
 
 I have been planting crocuses in the grass borders 
 all the morning, stabbing the turf with a pointed 
 spade handle, yclept dibble, and pushing the sturdy 
 little bulbs deep into the wounds. In April there 
 will be a cluster of starry flowers to cover each scar. 
 Fortunately my backbone is largely composed of 
 New England granite, or it would ache. As it is, I 
 am very glad to sit on a great heap of dry leaves 
 under the south wall and write in my garden book 
 while the cart has gone over to the pit by the river 
 to bring back a load of sand for my tulips and 
 hyacinths. 
 
 A " Boke of the Garden " is a necessity ; otherwise, 
 so kind is memory about disagreeables, one forgets 
 one's mistakes. I am sure that I should have for 
 gotten a very bad one of mine and have planted my 
 bulbs in the long strip in front of the honeysuckle 
 trellis, but for the finding last night, in an old desk, 
 of one of my schoolgirl journals in which garden 
 items and the sentiments of eighteen were impartially 
 mixed. Under April 20, it said : " Never plant bulbs
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 3 
 
 at the foot of the garden ; the water settles and the 
 mice come out of the wall and eat them or they rot. 
 I've only three hyacinths and four tulips left, but 
 then I didn't plant very many. When I marry I'm 
 going to push all the vegetables over the fence into 
 the field and have nothing but flowers here, and I'm 
 going to buy bulbs and roses by the hundred instead 
 of by sixes. . . . Pocket money doesn't go far for 
 plants when I have to buy gloves out of it to wear to 
 that stupid dancing class and have such very warm 
 hands. Aunt Lot promised that I should join, and I 
 couldn't go back on one of the family. But of 
 course when I'm married I shall be too old for that 
 sort of thing, which will be a great economy besides 
 letting me grub in peace. . . . Aunt Lot says that 
 I shall have changed my mind by then." 
 
 That was seven years ago, and lo and behold, here 
 I am by the same garden wall, married, but my mind 
 otherwise unchanged, and with bulbs by the hundred, 
 lying in their stout manila bags under the apple tree, 
 waiting to be planted. It seems a lifetime ago, the 
 coming about of it all, yet scarcely longer than the 
 week since our return, so many things have been 
 crowded into it. 
 
 To begin with, Bluff knew me ! At first I was not 
 sure if the recognition was genuine, for the astute
 
 4 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 old setter had won his name in early puppyhood 
 from his self-possession and the calm assurance, un 
 backed by circumstances, with which he emerged 
 unscathed from rights and other embarrassing situa 
 tions. The rapid barks that greeted me as I opened 
 the door might have been merely the joy of promised 
 companionship for the October evening ; for though 
 the logs on the study hearth were blazing finely 
 and the lamps were lit, the house seemed strangely 
 silent. 
 
 I stretched my hands toward the fire instinctively 
 and looked about the familiar room, where the long 
 lines of shelves were never able to hold the flock of 
 books that ran riot over table and mantel-shelf, 
 crowded the inkstand on the desk, and followed their 
 owner to his lounging chair, where they perched on 
 both arms, sometimes forgetting their dignity so far 
 as to fall sprawling to the floor. I looked over my 
 shoulder, expecting every moment to hear footsteps. 
 I was still under the spell of old-world tradition. 
 Bluff drew nearer, trembling with excitement, but the 
 long, ardent sniffs and tail waggings that gradually 
 broke from the usual side-to-side motion into circular 
 sweeps might be merely inquisitive enthusiasm. 
 
 Finally I heard a step in the hall and went to 
 meet it. A 'maid, wholly strange, handed me my
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 5 
 
 own telegram unopened, saying, " The doctor wasn't 
 looking for you, ma'am, until the eight o'clock train, 
 and he drove over to the hospital a few minutes 
 before this came, saying he'd be back well before 
 seven." 
 
 A weight fell upon the buoyant spirits that had 
 hurried me helter skelter from steamer to train, that 
 not a moment might be lost in getting to home and 
 father perhaps I should say father and home ; but I 
 think that in the far back transmigratory time I must 
 have once been a carrier pigeon, so strong is the 
 homing instinct in me. 
 
 Evan said that we should be arrested for escaped 
 lunatics, even if we avoided a similar penalty for 
 reckless driving. At the same time he promised the 
 driver an extra dollar if he made the desired train, 
 this being a combination of his inborn English cus 
 tom of tipping, that makes travel so easy, and a 
 prudent way that Evan has of explaining certain dis 
 advantages in what one wishes to do at the same 
 time that he is smoothing the way for the doing 
 thereof. All the way from Sandy Hook to the pier, 
 I had thumbed the old yellow time-table, never realiz 
 ing the changes that two years might have made in 
 it, fastening upon one train after another as petty 
 delays caused each in turn to be impossible. People
 
 6 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 crowded about, chattering incessantly of the beauty 
 of the bay and the approach to New York, the 
 returning tourist pausing every few minutes to ask 
 some foreigner how he liked America, then drowning 
 the polite incoherence of the answer by a whirlpool 
 of statistics about the length, breadth, thickness, and 
 cost of the Brooklyn Bridge. I had quite forgotten 
 how very loud we talk in public and how self-con 
 scious we are. Very probably, however, I was irri 
 table ; for my heart was leaping on and on to a 
 strip of wild land on a hillside, where pines and 
 forest trees stretch their branches to the sky ; scatter 
 ing flower beds weave in and out among the shrubs 
 in the southern corner cut into the hillside beneath 
 a bank wall, and half a dozen dogs lie dozing in the 
 sun upon the steps and porch of a rambling low 
 house, where lives my father, the country doctor 
 who carries comfort across the hills to the hard- 
 worked farming people, even as freely as the sun and 
 rain give strength to their crops. 
 
 Could anything be amiss ? Not for the first time, 
 however, had feet travelled faster than a telegram. 
 No sedate gray horses at the station, no dear gray 
 head in sight ; so taking the first proffer of a trap, I 
 had fled, leaving Evan to wrestle with the luggage 
 and the local teamster.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 7 
 
 Presently Bluff ceased his gyrations, and stood 
 watching me, paw raised, tail rigid, quite at a point, 
 while the maid was speaking ; then as I turned to go 
 down the hall, he gave one indescribable cry, so full 
 was it of human expression, made a bound, touched 
 the tip of my nose lightly with his tongue, then ran 
 to a hook beside the tall clock, across whose face the 
 full moon had sailed rhythmically for a hundred years, 
 without ever waning, seized a dusty riding whip that 
 hung there, my old whip, dragged it down, and 
 laid it at my feet, while he backed toward the door, 
 his eyes fixed on mine in a very delirium of joy. 
 
 Yes, Bluff knew me ! It was two years since he 
 had brought me the whip as the regular prelude to a 
 walk, two years since he had heard my voice : many 
 humans forget in that time. Bluff knew me, and 
 was welcoming me home not as a stranger, but as 
 one of his familiar world. Something tightened in 
 my throat. I stooped to hug the old faithful, but he 
 whirled about, and scampered toward the door. I 
 picked up the whip and followed. Outside a mild 
 gray twilight, mingled with the light of the quarter 
 moon, pictured everything with soft outlines. As 
 Bluff leaped down the steps, a pair of juncos flew 
 from their perch in the honeysuckles, but soon set 
 tled to rest again.
 
 8 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Where was the dog going ? Down between the 
 weigelias and lilacs through the stiff little arbour to 
 the garden, to the great bough apple tree whose 
 trunk was encircled by a seat. 
 
 Surely Bluff had not forgotten. Then as he saw 
 that I hesitated, he ran to a corner where stepping 
 stones led up the bank to the open fields, gave a 
 short bark and waited for me. 
 
 "Not to-night, old fellow; to-morrow we will go 
 there," I said, seating myself by the apple tree. 
 Instantly he thrust his nose into my hand, then 
 curled himself up at my feet. 
 
 Before me was the garden where I had played all 
 my childhood, until playing had turned into dream 
 ing. It was unkempt, but it seemed to have more 
 dignity and meaning than the garden of my memory ; 
 the unpruned rosebushes reached out long bare arms, 
 or formed briery tangles according to their kind, the 
 shrubs were massive and well grown, and had the 
 soothing influence of permanence. In a sheltered 
 corner a cluster of chrysanthemums, unharmed by 
 frost, showed their silvery disks, and a single crum 
 pled pansy looked up from the path where it had 
 found footing. What was that perfume ? Stooping, 
 I separated the cold, damp leaves of a mat of Russian 
 violets that grew from under the seat. Yes, there
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 9 
 
 were a dozen of the flowers themselves, anticipating 
 spring after their hopeful habit. 
 
 Violets were my mother's flowers, and this was her 
 seat. She went away when I was five years old, but 
 I have not forgotten, and I always called this great 
 apple with its ample branches that furnished nooks 
 alike to me and to the robins and bluebirds, the 
 Mother Tree. I used to make bouquets and 
 wreaths of my best flowers, and stick them in the 
 knot-holes or hang them on the branches the particu 
 lar day in June when father always shut himself into 
 his study, and would not speak even to me. 
 
 Aunt Lot had said that I was a pagan to make an 
 idol out of a tree and hang flowers on it, and scolded 
 until I cried bitterly. Father, hearing my distress, 
 came out to find the cause, and sat with me under 
 the tree all the afternoon. From that day we under 
 stood each other, and the study door was never 
 closed between us. Here, too, it was that he told 
 me of his plans for the hospital that now stands 
 over yonder by the town, where he meant to help all 
 women for mother's sake. I only understood his 
 moods gropingly in those days; for the subtle language 
 of the human heart cannot be imagined, but may only 
 be read by those who love and are loved in return, and 
 the other love also came to me through loving father.
 
 io THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Beside the gift of healing and sympathy with 
 everything living, father had the book madness. 
 Not the disagreeable stuffy kind of mania that 
 Nodier's Theodore died of, simply the hunger for 
 the friendships that books offered him and the desire 
 to keep such boon companions in the best of health 
 and raiment. Woe was upon me even in my baby 
 hood if I ever ate cookies over the lap of the mean 
 est volume or cut the leaves of a magazine with 
 anything less smooth than a paper knife ! So it 
 came about that when we took our winter holidays 
 in Boston and New York, we mingled music, theatre, 
 and pictures with many eager hours in a dingy auc 
 tion room where books were sold, that stood at the 
 meeting of three crossways. It is impossible to 
 word the keen joy we both found within those smoky 
 walls, father in the chase and bringing down the 
 prey, I in retrieving, so to speak. This sport con 
 sisted in rushing the precious volumes safely past 
 Aunt Lot's custom-house inspection and mixing 
 them with the older residents in the book shelves 
 until their identity was lost. 
 
 The risk of retrieving varied greatly with the size 
 of the book itself. The " New English Canaan " 
 and Josselyn's " Rarities " were easily pocketed, and 
 they modestly kept the secret of their own value,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE u 
 
 but to smuggle in the clumsy bulk of Gerarde's 
 " Herball " in its snuffy sheep cover was an impos 
 sibility, and father had to suffer from weak muddy 
 coffee for a fortnight. Good coffee was one of his 
 few luxuries, and Aunt Lot knew well how to make 
 her mild wrath felt. Exactly why she grudged 
 father his precious old books I never could discover, 
 possibly because she could not imagine any other 
 point of view than her own, which narrowness she 
 called economy. I very early found, however, that 
 we were not the only buyers obliged to retrieve. 
 Men came to that auction room whose word was law 
 to hundreds of their fellows, and packed away their 
 winnings in mysterious pockets like so many crimes, 
 and I once helped an old thumb-fingered gentleman, 
 who owned a railroad, to stow away a glorious mis 
 sal illuminated on vellum in a pasteboard box marked 
 " one ream legal cap ! " 
 
 Since then as a married woman I have mingled 
 with others of my class, and I find that this stupid 
 book grudge among us is a more fatal disease than 
 the book madness of men, and I only hope that some 
 one will discover the bacillus that causes it. I also 
 often wondered why father cared about Aunt Lot's 
 protestations ; such money as he had was his own to 
 spend, but it was doubtless owing to his medical rule
 
 12 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 of never reasoning with the unreasonable, and Aunt 
 Lot surely belonged to the latter class, even allowing 
 for her little kindnesses that were set edgewise like 
 thin streaks of lean in overwhelmingly fat bacon. 
 
 In fact, her very name came from her habit of 
 looking backward instead of forward at all the turn 
 ing-points of her life and thus missing her best 
 chances, until father had so often quoted " Re 
 member Lot's wife " to her, that unconsciously she 
 became Aunt Lot to us, though outsiders to this day 
 think her name Charlotte. 
 
 My book-shelves also shared in the spoils, and 
 each winter saw me more keen for the hunting. In 
 summer I almost forgot books. What need was 
 there for them when I had all outdoors around and 
 above and below me, everything belonging to me 
 through the sight, and telling its own story without 
 the chilly intervention of print? All outdoors and 
 father to take me everywhere ! 
 
 Said the Marquis of Carrabas to Puss in Boots, 
 upon one of the rare occasions when he offered any 
 advice : " We have but little money, but as long as 
 we use our eyes faithfully, everything that they see 
 under the sky is ours." In this way Puss grew up
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 13 
 
 with the idea that all outdoors belonged to her. By 
 the way, did you ever know that the Marquis was 
 really a country doctor, and that Puss was a female 
 child? 
 
 It was from father's shoulder that I peered into 
 my first woodpecker's hole, receiving a sharp reproof 
 in the nose from the bill of the irate owner. Who 
 could compare printed thoughts to those long drives 
 through the woods to the charcoal-burner's camp, the 
 horseback rides single file along the river path to the 
 sawmill, where a lumberman seemed always to -be ill 
 of ague from the dankness of the mill pond ? Or 
 the jolting trips in a buckboard over the corduroy 
 road across the marshes to the bar, where the light 
 house boat waited for us, or yet the tramps in pursuit 
 of plover and woodcock through the bottom lands ? 
 Do not be shocked, kind ladies of the Audubon 
 Society ; we obeyed the game laws, the birds always 
 went to the sick, and I knew no better ; also father 
 was quite proud of me when I shot an old crow on 
 the wing. If you try it, you will understand why ! 
 
 Then again I would stay for days in my garden, 
 grubbing in the few ragged borders that the vegeta 
 ble greed of the man of all work and Aunt Lot's
 
 14 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 love for spinky foliage beds left me, planning what I 
 should do in the " some day " that always seemed a 
 matter of course to me. The very first thing that I 
 should do in that happy time would be to send away 
 the gardener, and then I would have an iron pot 
 painted red, with red geraniums in it and conch 
 shells to edge the beds, like those in the garden of 
 the grocer's wife, for my taste was then in the Indian 
 war-paint stage. 
 
 When autumn came and outdoors put on her iron 
 mask to shield herself from cold, I crept back to the 
 study and made friends again with books, and read 
 each new catalogue, lying flat on my face upon an 
 old hair-cloth lounge, with Timperley's "Dictionary 
 of Printing" (which, being lumpy, heavy, and weak 
 in the back, was constantly falling off its shelf) for a 
 reading-desk. Ah ! web of Fate ! it was well that I 
 did not see you weaving the pattern of my life among 
 those pages ; being young, I might have resented you 
 and spoiled the fabric. 
 
 One day father discovered in a catalogue among 
 some curious medical books a copy of Dodoens's 
 " Herball." This he had long wanted for its absurdly 
 quaint descriptions of the medical properties of plants. 
 It was the English translation made by Henry Lite 
 and printed in London in 1586. It bore the auto-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 15 
 
 graph and notes of " J. Oldham, chirurgien," and a 
 verse from his pen : 
 
 " Reader ! (where Lite is in the Right) 
 Peruse in grateful strain, 
 And where Dodoneus is Erroneus 
 Correct him clear and plain. J. O. 1799." 
 
 Evidently Oldham had differed so much from the 
 author that his corrections were both clear, plain, and 
 plentiful. Though valuable from father's stand 
 point, it was a volume safely within the limits of his 
 purse, and the day of its selling he settled back in 
 his chair determined to hold the book against the 
 field. 
 
 It was a stormy February day, and there were only 
 two or three bidders of the class that buy on general 
 principles, who dropped out after a little, leaving my 
 father's terse bid to be echoed by one other in a dis 
 tant corner. The price began straightway to climb 
 hand over hand. What would Aunt Lot say ? 
 
 Finally the hammer fell, and father flushed with 
 victory gave his name as the purchaser ; the voice in 
 the corner did likewise. The seller paused, saying 
 that there was a mistake somewhere, and proceeded 
 to put up the book again. 
 
 I could see that father was going to be stubborn,
 
 16 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 and I trembled for the other person. I saw him 
 clearly as he stepped forward, a man of thirty, 
 slightly built and muscular, with a strong face and a 
 pair of steel-gray eyes that could see through a wall. 
 
 The two men looked each other in the face, the 
 younger gave a quizzical little smile, at me it seemed, 
 waived his claim, and the clatter of selling recom 
 menced. 
 
 Afterward as we picked our way downstairs in the 
 dusk, father hugging his Dodoens, Gray Eyes was 
 close in front of us, and during a moment's pause 
 father held out his hand and thanked him for his 
 courtesy. In short, the book of contention became 
 the book of introduction, for they instantly found 
 that they had mutual friends. Before a year was 
 out they discovered in truth that they had almost all 
 tastes in common ; they liked the same breed of books, 
 cigars of the same shape and moisture, country life 
 better than that of the city, and finally they agreed 
 that they both loved me; but in this rivalry it was 
 father who stepped aside and Evan was retriever. 
 
 Evan was English born, and like many a younger 
 son of that vigorous race preferred free flight to sit 
 ting underneath in an overcrowded nest, with no more 
 interesting view before him than that of his elder 
 brother's legs. So, after circling the globe, he settled
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 17 
 
 in America to ply his craft of landscape architect, for 
 which the time was ripe, and furnish the newly gen 
 teel with manor houses, Italian gardens, and pleached 
 alleys all made to measure like a suit of clothes. 
 
 When we were married, alack ! family matters 
 called Evan to England, so for two years we lived 
 away. One year was spent in travel, the other in a 
 quiet English country home, these two years being 
 divided by an illness of the kind where through sheer 
 weakness one loses gravity, and seems to float through 
 space seeking a footing either in heaven or earth and 
 finding neither. 
 
 The English life was mildly pleasant ; the country 
 with its myriad touchstones, glorious. The rambling 
 stone house, garden, and pleasance in Somerset that 
 fell to Evan's portion, overflowed with such flowers 
 as would gather pilgrims for miles around any New 
 England village. Jasmine halfway to the eaves, 
 Marechal Neil roses and Gloire de Dijons firm as 
 cabbages, bushes of picotee pinks, begonias, Fuchsias 
 grown to trees, sweet violets carpeting the orchard, 
 and ivy making dignified haste to conceal everything 
 unsightly. Herbaceous beds rioting in colour, and all 
 to be had for the picking and the limited care of an 
 erratic old fellow who had been under-gardener once 
 on a great estate, but was climbing down in the world,
 
 18 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 led by rheumatism, the English agriculturist's latter- 
 day companion. 
 
 In the middle of this garden, opposite my morning 
 seat, was an old stone sundial that had a strange influ 
 ence upon me. I could watch the shadow creep 
 across its face for hours without tiring ; the half-oblit 
 erated letters of the legend carved upon it read " I 
 only mark the sunlit hours." 
 
 It was a good moral and a pleasant influence to 
 grow strong and readjust oneself under. Domestic 
 life flowed easily with Martha Corkle, Evan's old 
 nurse, for majordomo, and a couple of the well- 
 trained maids that cost so little there. 
 
 For a few months Evan was boyishly happy. He 
 tramped the country-side over in visiting his old 
 haunts, and the smell of the may and cowslips made 
 his breath come short and the veins in his forehead 
 grow tense with suppressed emotion. Did you know 
 that the men of this race have a passion for flowers 
 and are knit thew and bone with the homing, soil- 
 loving instinct which they call loyalty ? The morning 
 of our wedding day, Evan laid a bunch of bride roses 
 in the branches of the Mother Tree in the garden, 
 so there are three now that understand. 
 
 The old days cast their spell upon him, days from 
 which time had removed the sting and left only the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 19 
 
 fragrance. Together we rowed on the deep, narrow 
 river, and in the shadowy cathedral listened to the 
 music that seemed to come from the organ without 
 human intervention ; in fact, we discovered each 
 other anew. 
 
 The newly mated should always go away for a 
 space, among strangers if possible. Readjustment 
 cannot take place in the old nest ; but, after that, all 
 is safe. Then, too, not to go away is not to know 
 the joy of return. 
 
 After a time Evan grew restless ; his scrap of the 
 family raiment was too small, he must weave his 
 own and mine, and for the worker the looms of 
 England are as crowded as the nests. 
 
 One September morning we sat by the sundial 
 trying to unravel our " weird " and see clearly what 
 was best. Evan held in his hand the offer from a 
 prosperous manufacturer to lease the place for ten 
 years, and while he brooded on the matter I held my 
 peace. I could not trust myself to speak, though 
 the words were crowding thick and fast to my 
 lips. 
 
 Two letters were brought out, one for Evan, 
 and one for me. Two American letters. Evan's was 
 lengthy, the bulk being typewritten, with an en 
 closed note in a well-known hand.
 
 20 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Mine was in father's odd stenographic characters. 
 Instinctively we drew apart to the ends of the bench 
 to read. 
 
 Five minutes passed ; I looked at Evan. He was 
 gazing at the sundial and gnawing his mustache, 
 then he looked at me, squared his shoulders, and 
 said, " McVicker writes me to come back, that 
 there is a splendid opening for the work that I like 
 best." Then he waited for me to answer, but in a 
 flash I could see the wish to be and do was in his 
 eyes, that he had no desire to sit still and crumble 
 like a respectable ruin. 
 
 " My letter is from father," I said, as soon as I 
 could steady my voice. "He begs us to come home" 
 (he who had come in my illness to draw me back 
 to life, left again, and never written or spoken a 
 lonely word before). "Aunt Lot is to marry the 
 Methodist minister next month and devote herself 
 to his eight children ! ' Come back,' he says; ' I am 
 hungry for you. This home is yours from now on, 
 in deed and truth, all the place I need being for 
 myself and books.' " 
 
 Instantly we were side by side again in the middle 
 of the bench, our hands joined, and both laughing. 
 
 " Poor Aunt Lot ! " said Evan. " What a fate ! 
 But she will be no longer bothered by books,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 21 
 
 oecause he will never have the money to buy any 
 thing but an almanac, and that species of dissenter 
 moves about too much to carry a library if he had 
 one. But, Barbara, I very much dislike taking or 
 living in another man's house, even if he is your 
 father. Besides, the pity of leaving all this," and 
 he glanced around the garden. 
 
 "If we only take the part that isn't filled with 
 father and books, we shan't be taking very much," 
 I ventured. 
 
 Evan laughed, as the recollection of father's 
 pervasion of every nook and corner came back to 
 him. 
 
 Then I squeezed my hands between his, because 
 Evan is always best content when he is protecting 
 something, and fairly begged him to take me home. 
 " As for a garden," I argued, " we will have a 
 charming one, and we will begin it with your god 
 mother's fifty pounds that she gave us to buy some 
 thing ' useful and instructive ' for a wedding present. 
 What could be better ? The use will be beauty and 
 the learning pleasure. I will be the only gardener, 
 and you shall have a buttonhole flower for every 
 week-day and two for Sundays." 
 
 " And go in and out of town and be a commuter, 
 like the men of that hungry-looking crowd that I
 
 22 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 used to see hurrying down the station steps of a 
 morning, with unblacked boots and crumby clothes ? " 
 said Evan, sighing. 
 
 " If living in the country and working in town is 
 being a commuter, yes," I said boldly; "but there 
 are several kinds of them : those who do it because 
 they think it is cheaper to live in the country (which 
 usually means that they are where their friends do 
 not see what they go without), and those who love 
 the country for its own sake; and our home will 
 be in the real country, not in a tailor-made suburb. 
 You shall have your breakfast in time, no bundles 
 to carry, no crumbs on your chin, or egg on your 
 mustache, and I will never talk about servants. 
 Oh, Evan! if you only knew" then the nervous 
 ness left of my illness mastered me, I broke down, 
 and it was all settled then and there. 
 
 Presently Evan startled me with, " How about 
 Martha Corkle ! I can't lease her with the place, 
 a widow and all that, don't you know ; a good sort, 
 too, only overset and respectful. Couldn't we take 
 her over, now ? Save you a lot of bother, and 
 she could overlook things a regular old reliable." 
 
 I was about to say No emphatically, for I thought 
 that Martha, conventional and rigid, would not be 
 able to overlook in another sense many things in
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 23 
 
 a thoroughly New England home, but Evan asked 
 so little and I so much. Then as I looked up, an 
 idea seized me ; I would carry a talisman from the 
 Old world to the New, and I said, " You may trans 
 plant Martha Corkle (strictly at your own risk, be 
 it said) if you will also take the sundial." So we 
 four are here! 
 
 Bluff sprang up sniffing and growled, but only for 
 a minute. Evan was coming down the path peering 
 among the bushes to find me. For a moment we 
 stood silently arm in arm under the Mother Tree, 
 then we heard the rapid trotting of a horse coming 
 down the hill and in at the gate. Before I could 
 shake off the spell of the past two years and realize 
 that I was myself, father came swiftly across the 
 orchard, calling, " Barbara ! my child, where are 
 you ? " and gathered me up in his arms. 
 
 He had not shed a tear when I went away, but 
 now they rained upon my face, mingled with the 
 late falling leaves of the Mother Tree, while all 
 the pent-up love of those two years was in that one 
 word, Barbara ! 
 
 Mother love is invariably held sacred, as it should 
 be, but why has father love never had its due ? It
 
 24 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 may be rarer, though no less deep or unselfish. In 
 fact, as I grow older and see other people's mothers, 
 I think there is less self-consciousness in the father 
 love. Who should know this love so well as I whose 
 mother went away when I was five years old ? In 
 those years "Our Father Who art in Heaven " meant 
 my father beside my bed, who soothed me until 
 darkness bore no terrors. To one who has had 
 such a father, unbelief in God is impossible. 
 
 Bluff could not keep in the background for long, 
 and capered about in such evident comprehension of 
 the whole situation that we were soon laughing, and 
 I told father that though this was the garden of 
 Eden, we were going to reverse the old order. 
 Adam and Eve, instead of being driven out soon 
 after their marriage, had come back from their wed 
 ding trip to feast upon apples, especially those of 
 the tree of knowledge, and that we were going to 
 turn out the serpent and make it into the most 
 fascinating topsy-turvy garden possible, even the 
 Garden of a Commuter's Wife ! Also that we had 
 imported Martha Corkle, the sundial, and a beauti 
 ful tall copy of the Pickering Walton's "Angler " ; 
 that we bought the last thing in a little book-shop in 
 Southampton for him. I shall remember that shop 
 a long time, for a smutty-nosed cat fresh from the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 25 
 
 ash bin insisted upon perching on the shoulder of 
 my smart new coat and rubbing against my face. 
 
 As we entered the door, all talking at once, there 
 stood Martha Corkle herself, the stains of travel 
 removed, clean, respectful, severe. I knew that 
 she had a headache. Oh ! why had she not gone 
 comfortably to bed just that one night ? 
 
 Father ejaculated, " Bless me ! " then shook her 
 cordially by the hand, never noticing that she was 
 shocked ; but in the evening meal and long fireside 
 confidences I again quite forgot her. 
 
 This will never do ! While I have been day 
 dreaming they have brought the sand and dumped it 
 in the wrong place !
 
 II 
 
 CONCERNING GARDENERS 
 (IN GENERAL) 
 
 October 27. In my childhood's garden of dreams 
 there was no room for a gardener. To me that 
 name meant a being who was the interferer, not the 
 mediator between oneself and mother earth, a man 
 who tyrannized and sulked by turns ; in spring was 
 blatant and self-confident; in autumn, owing to 
 divers mistakes, usually indignant with the quality 
 of the soil, the slope of the land, the amount of rain, 
 and the date of the coming of frost ; in short, made 
 us feel as if we had combined with nature to bring 
 about his martyrdom, which he bore with something 
 akin to triumph, enveloping himself with a halo of 
 failures. 
 
 A gardener is of course a necessity to the very 
 rich, those unfortunates whose possessions have 
 expanded alike beyond their personal control and 
 out of the range of the affections, to the overbusy, 
 the ignorant, and the irresponsible. These four 
 
 26
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 27 
 
 classes may have a distinct yearning to grow flowers, 
 fruits, and vegetables, and yet from the causes 
 named are unable to assume the joyful responsi 
 bility of so doing. 
 
 On the other hand, it is not needful personally to 
 wield the spade that turns the soil, or trundle the bar 
 row that carries the manure. Well-directed brute 
 force does this far more admirably, and digging and 
 dragging make one's pen hand, or thimble finger 
 (according to sex and employment) wretchedly stiff, 
 besides causing a wicked extravagance in the matter 
 of shoes and laundry work. But if one fails to per 
 vade the planting and training with individuality, 
 then is that garden like the proverbial egg without 
 salt ; and of such overdone, underdone, tasteless 
 embryos there are plenty, and it is not people's 
 fault if there are not more. It is merely because it 
 is difficult to force nature into ungraceful attitudes 
 or inharmonious colourings. 
 
 " I haven't seen anything like this for years. I've 
 told Tomkins to plant fragrant things, but he says 
 lemon verbena isn't used now, and mignonette makes 
 the border lines uneven, but it doesn't do to "thwart 
 one's gardener, you know," was the plaint of Mrs. 
 Jenks-Smith, one of the summer colony on the bluff, 
 when, upon her going into my garden after a profes-
 
 28 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 sional visit to father, I hesitatingly offered her a 
 great bunch of rose, apple, and nutmeg geranium, 
 annual wall flower, lemon verbena, mignonette, and 
 lavender sprigs. 
 
 When mother was here, we never had a real gar 
 dener. She came from a tranquil, old-time home 
 of simpler days, the last child of all; and though 
 her miniature makes her very lovely, a flower her 
 self, father insists that to paint her expression would 
 have been impossible. She brought with her the 
 will and skill of garden craft as well as many plants 
 that modern gardeners ignore, though through their 
 beauty, combined with their persistent permanence, 
 their names are appearing once more in the seed 
 catalogues. 
 
 The garden helper in her brief time was a cheer 
 ful man of all work who dug and delved as she 
 guided him, and so much of herself radiated from 
 her nook under the Mother Tree, with its vista 
 down the long walk on either side of which the 
 flowers were planted, and 'was so wrought into the 
 soil, that it still remains after a lapse of twenty 
 years of more or less motiveless experiment, to give 
 the keynote to the garden of my life. 
 
 Though I was very young, I remember perfectly 
 the eagerness with which she watched for the seed
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 29 
 
 catalogues, simple, convincing affairs lacking the 
 gaudy colour horrors from which, happily, we seem 
 to be again emerging. 
 
 When the lists had been duly made and recon 
 sidered, for the seed-lists of enthusiasts always 
 have to be cut down and reconstructed, they were 
 mailed. The second rapture was when the parcels 
 came. Oh, the delicious smell of the manila paper 
 bags that held the bulbs, and the damp, bog moss 
 that wrapped growing roots, in which I remember 
 once finding a cranberry plant with a berry, and 
 thus learning that the red fruit did not grow upon 
 a tree like cherries, as I had thought! These two 
 odours are among my primary memories, not to be 
 forgotten any more than I could forget mother's 
 way of lingering over my name as she pronounced 
 it, the sky light in her eyes, of the purple blue of 
 the fringed gentian, or the expression of father's 
 face when on coming home from a long morning 
 ride he found mother among her flowers ; she 
 would bring him a welcome bit of luncheon and 
 some cooling drink as he rested under the old 
 apple tree while she listened to his report of vari 
 ous happenings, and I absorbed scraps of food 
 and conversation alike. 
 
 I never again saw that look in his eyes after
 
 30 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 mother went away, but one day its counterpart 
 flashed from Evan's, and then I knew that we 
 loved each other without a spoken word. 
 
 From that time on, father, with his increasing 
 practice and the hospital to direct, had little time 
 to give to outdoor details. He saw that the horses 
 were always in good condition, for this was often 
 a matter of life or death to some one. He fed 
 his dogs, and clung to them for their silent friend 
 ship, as he sat in his study with his books, or, 
 with his gun, strode off up through the stubble 
 fields, of an October morning; and he always liked 
 to have a posy on his mantel-shelf or writing table. 
 
 Yes, one thing more: he told Aunt Lot to plan 
 and plant as she pleased, but to make no change 
 in the beds that followed the long walk, and spring 
 and fall he watched the thinning out and resetting 
 that insures the long lives of hardy plants, and let 
 ting only the most perfect blossoms mature their 
 seed until year by year new colours, fanciful hybrids, 
 appeared in the borders, now a thickly matted flower 
 jungle. 
 
 Poor Aunt Lot and the man of all work soon 
 disagreed, however; he was accustomed to have 
 his day's toil planned for him by one who under 
 stood, and then do it in a methodical manner.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 31 
 
 Aunt Lot had never before cultivated anything 
 more than a city "dooryard," or controlled any 
 service but that of a broken-spirited maid of the 
 poor relation variety, consequently she was inco 
 herent and unreasonable in her directions, expect 
 ing him to sow and reap, so to speak, on the same 
 day. I became fully impressed with this by the 
 time I was six years old, and at this time father, 
 tired of settling differences, engaged a " gardener," 
 thinking it would be easier to hold a man respon 
 sible than his elder half-sister, who always retreated 
 behind a sort of concrete breastwork composed of 
 reminiscences of his boyish shortcomings, relation 
 ship, and tears. 
 
 Father and Aunt Lot looked upon the gardener 
 from different points of view. Aunt Lot used him 
 alternately as a weapon or a patent of superiority to 
 be worn at village teas; father apologetically, as a 
 housewife accustomed to New England thrift would 
 refer to a housekeeper that she had been forced to 
 employ, through her own incompetence ; while I 
 hated the gardener with the uncompromising honest 
 hatred of childhood, because, whether he was called 
 John, Pat, or Peter, he invariably regarded my efforts 
 as things of little account, trod on the shells that I 
 brought from the shore with infinite labour to edge
 
 32 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 my bit of flower patchwork, and in spring always 
 dug up my bulbs and hardy roots because it was 
 easier than to dig between them, a stern fact that 
 sent me outside garden limits to the wild field be 
 yond the strawberry bed, where I coaxed an intimate 
 friend of mine, an up-country boy named Dan'l, who 
 brought berries to sell, and did odd errands for 
 father, to dig up two long strips one on either side of 
 a grassy cart track that had once led to a hay-field, 
 now reached by another road. Little I then thought 
 that I was locating my garden of dreams. 
 
 The boy dug sturdily, the soil was black on top 
 and mellow loam beneath a happy combination, and 
 my flowers throve far better than in the half shady, 
 badly tilled garden bed. 
 
 I paid Dan'l with a jew's-harp, two old but well pre 
 served valentines, and a purplish red necktie which 
 Aunt Lot had bought father, but which he had im 
 mediately concealed under some papers in the little 
 room beyond his office where he kept his instru 
 ments, and then given me for a doll's sash. The 
 valentines must have signified more to Dan'l than 
 they did to me, for he instantly began to lavish tokens 
 upon me, hickory-nut beads, willow whistles, a home 
 made fishing rod, and a wreath of thistle puffs for 
 my hat. This ornament I wore for several weeks
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 33 
 
 until one fell day I left the hat hanging in the 
 Mother Tree, and the yellow birds pulled the puffs 
 apart to eat the seeds. 
 
 But the most treasured gifts were the roots of the 
 old-fashioned flowers that grew in unkempt wealth 
 about his grandmother's garden. I had often been 
 there when father visited the patient old soul, who 
 was lame, and had admired the syringa, snowball, 
 and lilac bushes that almost hid the house from the 
 road, while the cinnamon roses crept out between the 
 palings, and straggled up and down the lonely cross 
 road as if hungering for news, while in August the 
 white phlox escaping into the grass made a snow 
 bank between the gate and the porch. 
 
 As I remember those valentines, which, by the 
 way, had been given me by our cook, they were 
 quite startling, and most unsuitable in their gender. 
 One was surmounted by two papier-mache hearts, and 
 bore the query, "Will you be my wife?" and the 
 other had a scrap of looking-glass in the centre 
 framed with the words, " In this you see the girl I 
 love." 
 
 But such a mere detail did not dash Dan'l's 
 ardour, for was he not ten years old, both romantic 
 and chivalrous, and determined to be a soldier ? 
 While I, being eight at the time, and much interested
 
 34 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 even then in hospital talk, seriously thought of going 
 to battle with him as a nurse. 
 
 Circumstances, however, prevented, the chief among 
 them being that there was no war at the time ; father, 
 to whom as a matter of course I confided my plans, 
 declined to go with us as surgeon, and what was the 
 use of a soldier to shoot people and a nurse with ban 
 dages if there was no one there to cut off legs ? an 
 amputation being then my idea of the treatment to 
 be given all soldiers, while lastly at this juncture 
 Dan'l left home to work for a grocer at another 
 village. I saw him yesterday in town, delivering 
 goods at the hospital from a neat shiny wagon of his 
 own. Alas for intentions, chivalry, and the daring 
 soldier life! The flowers of our childhood's friend 
 ship have been more enduring, however. His last 
 gift was a small rosebush planted in a lard pail to 
 which he had given ventilation by perforating it with 
 small holes. 
 
 " Granddad brought the bush this came off of from 
 Boston b'fore I was born and it's just bust itself 
 growing, and we've given away lots of cuttings ; but 
 this isn't any cutting, it's a regular year-old plant," 
 he said, as he thrust the pail at me. 
 
 The plant proved to be a fragrant, clear white rose 
 with handsome dark foliage, the lovely Madame
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 35 
 
 Plantier that was brought over in the thirties and 
 has never been surpassed as a healthy, willing 
 bloomer. Now, even in its leafless state, it is a giant 
 shrub in my tangled-up child border and will hold its 
 place in the garden that is to be as well as mother's 
 beds of hardy flowers. But of the perfunctory, skin- 
 deep work combined of Aunt Lot and the four gar 
 deners that separates mother's reign from mine, not 
 a trace remains save a few scars on the grassy slope 
 beneath the study windows, that mark the location of 
 some fantastic foliage beds, which as for beauty or 
 fragrance might as well have been made of gay 
 carpet or spotted calico. 
 
 The ingredients of this class of bed are always the 
 same, though the beds themselves may vary in shape 
 and compounding coleus in vars, red geraniums, 
 alternanthera, dusty miller, hen and chickens, with 
 salvias or cannas for centrepieces, all worthy and 
 innocent plants individually, but so hot and stiff when 
 combined, affecting the colour-sensitive like the sight 
 of a stout, short-necked woman walking in the sun 
 with a tight gown and high collar. 
 
 "You are straying from gardens," murmur the 
 leaves of my " Garden Boke," through which the 
 breeze is rustling and conveniently drying the ink 
 without aid from a blotter.
 
 36 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Ah, yes, but the subject is so broad, and the 
 by-paths so many, that straying is inevitable. Be 
 sides, I am not exploiting the genuine skilled gar 
 dener of the main line, the developer of nature's 
 resources, to whom all honour is due. The gardener 
 to whom I take exception should always have his 
 title enclosed in " marks " and is of the tribe that 
 seems to launch itself at the ever-busy and guileless 
 American of moderate means and good taste, who, 
 desiring a garden and having little knowledge of the 
 necessary detail and still less time to learn, hires a 
 " gardener," pays liberally for seed and manure, and 
 from the combination of the three entertains Great 
 Expectations. If the man so hired were really what 
 he pretends to be, all would be well. But the pro 
 cession marching under the Sign of the Spade is a 
 motley crowd indeed, especially in this land, where a 
 knowledge of country life and its various processes, 
 its pitfalls as well as its potency for good, though 
 increasing daily, has not yet become a part of our 
 national inheritance. As I look out over the hills 
 and think of the people I have known during the 
 past ten years who, for various reasons, have tried 
 this glorious outdoor existence and failed to live it, 
 and judge the cause, it seems to me that one and all 
 they approached it wrongly.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 37 
 
 The first difficulty is that people often think that 
 by living in the country they can do without the 
 comforts and necessities, lacking which city life 
 would be doubly unbearable. Also they begin with 
 no sort of preparation, either hereditary or acquired. 
 Nature simply despises people who come to her as 
 a last resort and try to squeeze a living from her, 
 or otherwise harry her. She must be wooed under- 
 standingly, like any high-spirited woman, not bullied, 
 for she has a capricious temper, and is at once a 
 spendthrift and an economist. 
 
 Why, then, should any one expect by a mere 
 " declaration of intention " and a railway journey 
 to conquer the country and learn the secrets of the 
 life it offers, in perhaps a single season ? And why 
 should one expect to lead a satisfactory country life 
 upon a cheap basis that would not maintain life else 
 where ? 
 
 "But," again hints my "Boke of the Garden," "what 
 has this tirade to do with gardeners ? " Everything, 
 dear, patient, unresisting confidant, everything. It 
 is these experimentalists that cause bad service both 
 in and out of doors, and by putting up with incom 
 petence, encourage it. 
 
 429132
 
 Ill 
 
 CONCERNING GARDENERS 
 
 (IN PARTICULAR) 
 
 October 27. To return to the procession of gar 
 deners who have crossed my path either directly 
 or indirectly, by pouring their woes into father's 
 sympathetic ear, he being a sort of confessor, labour- 
 bureau, and first aid to the mentally and financially, 
 as well as to the physically, injured of a fifteen-mile 
 circuit, comprising open country villages and a fac 
 tory town, my knowledge of them is based upon 
 stern fact. 
 
 The most usual and really least offensive of the 
 group may be found abundantly in England also. 
 They are the old men who have drifted through 
 feebleness to drink, and think that gardening is 
 merely a gentle disturbing of the soil and a tying 
 up of vines in the opposite direction to which they 
 desire to go, like the usual unqualified curate's idea 
 of the ministry. 
 
 Second to these, are the young men with weak 
 38
 
 39 
 
 lungs for whom outdoor work has been advised, who 
 are naturally depressed and must not be expected 
 to turn over the soil more than half a spade's depth. 
 These we also pity. But we wholly fail to appreciate 
 the services of the next grade the natural fools, 
 whose relatives steer them into gardening as a fitting 
 occupation. These three classes may be excused 
 as unfortunates not wholly responsible for the dis 
 appointments they cause. 
 
 The most trying type of all, however, is the one 
 that I found here on my return, the know-it-all in 
 dividual who, after spending a few months in potting 
 cuttings for a florist, and mowing dooryards, adver 
 tises, " Wanted, a position by a graduate gardener, 
 to take entire charge of a gentleman's place. Can 
 milk." He doesn't say will milk, mind you! Oh, 
 if unsophisticated folk only realized the tragedy con 
 centrated in those two words, Can milk ! 
 
 Once arrived, he assumes the dignity of a profes 
 sional, and considers himself as far above the mere 
 labourer who cheerfully spits on his hands and 
 wields the spade, as our present housemaid, a 
 young Irish-American whom father has with diffi 
 culty coaxed from the factory work that was killing 
 her "to accommodate," and who is betrothed to a 
 factory youth, whom she marries at Christmas, and
 
 40 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 whose mother owns " rale " estate, feels above the 
 usual rank and file of " livin'-out girls." 
 
 The caste spirit among the American working 
 classes ? Most assuredly, quite as absurd and 
 strictly drawn as among their employers. Neither 
 are we as a family quite what we should be in this 
 housemaid's eyes, I gathered from a conversation 
 that took place between her and Martha Corkle, as 
 we belong to the working class, for do not both father 
 and Evan work for a living ? 
 
 One learns much in two years of absence from 
 home and country, much that is not realized until the 
 return. Theoretically we are free and equal. In 
 reality we are often bondsmen and not to our real 
 or fancied superiors, but to our servants. Perhaps, 
 however, when we are better educated to command, 
 the fetters will be broken. 
 
 One thing we must always lack, now that slave 
 days are past, and that is one of the great benefits of 
 ancestry the hereditary servitor. In the old coun 
 tries, especially England, that is the inspiration as 
 well as the despair of those who have lived in one of 
 its home gardens and hope ever to equal it here on a 
 similar financial basis hereditary outdoor labour is 
 as honourable as any profession that descends from 
 father to son. The gardener has probably pottered
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 41 
 
 about the place from the time he was a chubby 
 cheeked boy earning his first thri'penny bit by 
 washing flower-pots, served an apprenticeship of 
 experience, until in old age his trembling fingers can 
 hardly hold the sprays of apricots that he strives to 
 fasten against the wall which alone draws the heat 
 necessary to ripen them. Unconsciously he knows 
 the soil, he knows the spots that the sun warms 
 earliest in spring, he knows the borders that catch 
 the drip of winter rains, in what corners mildew 
 flourishes, and which is the chief resort of the perva 
 sive earwig, and all the other capabilities and short 
 comings of the ground intrusted to him, be it large 
 or small, as the physician knows the constitution of a 
 patient that he has tended from birth. But to have 
 this type of servitor, he must be inherited with the 
 garden, and this implies the law of entail. What 
 will you have ? My previous decision about gar 
 deners in general, and our present incumbent espe 
 cially, was confirmed by the dumping of that great 
 load of sand in the wrong place at a time when a 
 day's delay in planting the bulbs might have 
 brought frost to lock the ground until spring. You 
 may argue that a few days' delay is a small thing, 
 but that proves that you were not born to the soil. 
 I had said to Chris, the gardener, "Go over to the
 
 42 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 river for the sand, and when you return, call me, and 
 I will show you where to spread it." Instead, the 
 man, a Swedish youth, a hospital proteg6 of father's, 
 who was of the class that had once potted endless 
 cuttings in a mechanical way while he thought of 
 everything else than his work, drove in by the lower 
 gate and scattered the sand over two strips that are 
 to be shrubberies, simply because, as he said, in 
 grudging explanation, he "thought nice beds of 
 tulips in stripes would look good dere, and be more 
 best dan vere you dink to put them." The bugle 
 call of revolt has sounded, but in a novel and unusual 
 way ; the commuter's wife arises mentally against the 
 "gardener," instead of vice versa, and his downfall 
 will be swift. 
 
 It took the rest of the day to sweep up the sand 
 and get another load. Meanwhile, Chris worked in 
 a huff, as if a deep affront had been put upon him. 
 
 I could see by the hard, caked condition of the 
 soil in the old flower beds, by the long walk, and in 
 the vegetable garden generally, that it had not been 
 deeply and properly stirred all summer. But when I 
 asked him to fork up the ground thoroughly between 
 the roots of some of mother's hardy plants, he 
 replied : 
 
 "It is not best. In my country we do not so.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 43 
 
 Stiff ground on top, he keep out both heat and 
 cold." 
 
 A similar request to rake a mass of chickweed off a 
 bed, instead of digging it in, brought the rejoinder: 
 
 " It is time wasted. The winter, he will kill it," 
 while every one knows that in most places this weed 
 blooms at intervals in all months but ' perhaps two, 
 and flourishes mightily. 
 
 In despair, I went to father and asked him who had 
 given the man directions the eighteen months of his 
 stay, where he came from, who recommended him, 
 and whether he understood that I was to be obeyed ? 
 
 Father appeared rather embarrassed for a man 
 with surgical nerve, to retain which, perhaps, he has 
 always been an avoider of domestic flurries. Then 
 the end of his nose twitched as it does when he is 
 cornered and wants to laugh, which he finally did as 
 he said : 
 
 " Chris was employed by a florist over in town, cut 
 his hand, got blood poisoning, and turned up at the 
 hospital. He seemed intelligent and a great reader. 
 Why, really, Barbara, the first morning he worked 
 here in spring, he stopped me when he was weeding 
 radishes, and asked me if I liked Ibsen, saying he did 
 not, ' because he takes the hope from man.' I'm 
 sure, Bab, that showed discernment. And then, he
 
 44 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 really prefers well-printed books to cheap affairs with 
 paper covers, and quite appreciated the green morocco 
 bindings on my Bacon's works. I haven't told you 
 that last winter I secured a copy of that 1753 folio 
 edition, in three volumes, with the Vertue portrait, 
 
 that I missed through irresolution at the sale, 
 
 though I could not have it bound until after your 
 Aunt Lot's marriage. 
 
 " He is all eagerness, too, about a course of read- 
 
 \ 
 ing I had planned for him this winter, even hoping 
 
 for early frost, so that he may begin." 
 
 " Early frost is one thing he cannot be allowed 
 to have, for I want open ground for a month to 
 come," I said, hardly able to keep my face straight. 
 Dear old dad was terribly in earnest, and so 
 easily imposed upon, and this wretch had keenly 
 scented out his chief foible. It also made my 
 heart ache to think of father's home loneliness 
 during those two years, when he had no one to 
 appreciate his treasures but a gardener. Book 
 collecting up to a certain point is a secretive occu 
 pation, but something in the pleasure is lacking if 
 there is no chance to display the latest purchase 
 in a nonchalant way to the gaze of some one who 
 knows its value. 
 
 " He may be discerning," I said, after steadying
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 45 
 
 myself ; " in fact, too much so for our needs, but not 
 in gardening. You weren't thinking of employing 
 him to catalogue your books, I suppose ? " I ventured. 
 
 Then father laughed heartily to cover a certain 
 confusion that told me plainly that he entertained 
 Quixotic views of Chris's capabilities of education, 
 and stammered : 
 
 " My dear, he can write like copper plate ! " 
 
 " Were the vegetables good last summer ? " I 
 continued frostily. "There seems to be very little 
 over in the root cellar." 
 
 "No, not very, but er, you see it was first dry 
 and then wet quite wet." 
 
 " Why have the grape vines been allowed to tumble 
 off the arbour and lie on the ground ? " 
 
 "Chris said the string I bought was poor." 
 
 "Why isn't the celery banked yet?" 
 
 " He says the new way is to let it get a touch 
 of frost first." 
 
 "Is he cheap?" 
 
 " Barbara, my child, you know I never beat 
 down the price of labour." 
 
 "Of what use is Chris?" 
 
 "He has some good points, and er we must 
 have some one, for Tim has all he can do to fol 
 low me about and keep horses and stable in trim."
 
 46 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Mother was her own gardener, and I want to 
 follow her as closely as I may and yet be quite 
 myself," I said gently. 
 
 "Then all will be well, indeed," said father, a 
 load seeming to slip from his shoulders, "for after 
 all I believe that I must have let Chris go," he 
 continued, a suspicious twinkle in his eyes, "for he 
 told me yesterday that you do not appreciate him, 
 and that sympathy is more to him than wages. 
 He announced that he can 'go to the big house 
 on the bluff where folks never interfere with the 
 gardener.' Though, come to think of it, his 
 remarks were hardly consistent, for 'letting alone' 
 is not sympathy, and I believe he mentioned that 
 they offered wages which were really fabulous. 
 
 " Still, I am afraid you'll be disappointed. You 
 are so eager to block out your garden and plant all 
 those bulbs before frost, and Evan is too busy in 
 getting settled at his work to do more than give you 
 advice. I fear you are undertaking too much, and 
 you will have no time left for enjoyment." 
 
 "Not a bit, and nothing could suit me better. 
 Now, you dear old father, please pay me every 
 month the wages that you paid Chris and you 
 shall see well, either something or nothing. You 
 may not notice the difference at first, but you will
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 47 
 
 soon. Oh, daddy, daddy, I don't believe, after all 
 these years even, you know exactly how I love 
 flowers and all the things that made the old home, 
 which are increased tenfold in the new. Evan does, 
 and that is the wonder of it, and the reason why he 
 is content to take up this life and help to make it 
 surer for me every day. The thought of what it all 
 means for the years to come goes singing through 
 my head even when I'm asleep. I want to do the 
 things, not have them done for me. You know you 
 always preach that babies brought up by servants 
 and led in after dinner are not at all the same things, 
 nor as lovable, as those cuddled and nursed by their 
 mothers. And it's the same way with a garden. 
 
 " Of course I must have an animated shovel in the 
 person of a useful man, maybe a boy to do weeding 
 in the growing season ; and that reminds me that I 
 must ask Tim if he can't find me a man for to-mor 
 row. We'll give Chris the rest of his month's wages 
 and let him go, won't we, dear? for he is as im 
 possible to gardening as a bump in a shoe to walk 
 ing. And you need not have qualms, for he has 
 really dismissed himself." 
 
 " Perhaps there is some one about the hospital I 
 could get," suggested father. 
 
 " Daddy, dear," I begged, putting both arms
 
 48 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 around his neck, and looking him in the eyes until 
 our noses met, a trick of childhood, to fix his atten 
 tion, " I'm the same Barbara as ever, but my eyes 
 have seen and I've learned a few new things. I will 
 sew for the hospital, grow flowers and vegetables for 
 it, visit it, bring the poor convalescents over here to 
 sit in the sun, grow white flowers for those who 
 never go home, and give it a great deal more of 
 your time than I want to spare, but please, please, 
 let wages be wages, and charity, charity. The two 
 are harder to mix properly than mayonnaise in hot 
 weather. Don't you remember, dearest, what times 
 we have had with the people that you have tried to 
 serve without putting them under obligation, by let 
 ting them think they were aiding you, while it usu 
 ally ended, after much discomfort, in our being 
 considered under obligation ? People that were not 
 ill enough for the hospital, and yet needed tinkering. 
 I don't think I was troubled by it at the time, but I 
 observed, and the facts must have stowed themselves 
 away somewhere in my brain ; for since I have been 
 a wife, and the domestic side of me is developing, I 
 partly realize Aunt Lot's dilemmas, and the whole 
 fantastic crowd flit in front of me, exhibiting their 
 infirmities as if in warning. 
 
 "There was the man with the rheumatism who
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 49 
 
 thought he could care for cows because he had 
 driven a milk wagon. The first thing he did was 
 to dump a load of windfall apples into the corner 
 of the pasture, so that when Black Bess, who was 
 always greedy, came home that night, she did not 
 lead as usual, and her ears hung down and she 
 leaned against the gate, she was so intoxicated from 
 the cider the fermented apples had made in her 
 stomach. Then you had to fuss over her all night, 
 and her milk dried up. 
 
 " Surely you remember the winter that Aunt Lot 
 struggled with the cook who had a lame knee and 
 couldn't go down cellar, and the waitress who had 
 vertigo and couldn't take the dishes down from 
 the top pantry-shelf without dropping them. Then 
 the next cook couldn't even wash her dish-towels, 
 because it hurt her to bend her liver, and when 
 the washing was all put out, expected higher wages 
 than if she had been able to do it." 
 
 " But Tim came to us through the hospital," 
 said father, brightening as he caught at this plank 
 in a whirlpool of disasters, " and surely we could 
 not do without him." 
 
 " No, Tim is the exception to the rule. In the 
 face of experience even, we should never dream of 
 parting from him or he from us, I firmly believe."
 
 50 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Tim, Tim'thy Saunders, or Crumpled Tim, as he 
 
 / 
 
 is locally called on account of his curious body, 
 which, owing to a railway smash-up, without being 
 absolutely hump-backed, looks as if a giant had 
 taken him in his hand and literally " crumpled " 
 him up, is a Scotchman, with a keen, not over- 
 suave tongue, a sharp eye, and as honest a heart 
 in his crooked body as ever beat. He has lived 
 with father ever since I was little enough to call 
 him my camel and think that being given a ride 
 on his hunched shoulders was the finest sport in 
 the world. 
 
 Now, happily for me, Evan and Tim had formed 
 an odd friendship early in our courtship, based on 
 national loyalty, so that neither could do wrong 
 in the eyes of the other. This was providential 
 and promised to make the "commuting" side of 
 the daily life smooth, for Tim will never grumble 
 at the extra horse, or if he has upon occasion to 
 drive Evan to an earlier train than usual ; while 
 Evan seems fully prepared to take the blame upon 
 himself instead of scolding Tim if they fail to catch 
 it, which mischance of course may happen. Now, 
 in addition, Martha Corkle, egged on by reasons of 
 family and national pride, had served a good break 
 fast to the minute of promptness during this, as
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 51 
 
 we call it, " commencement week," so that the 
 rocks of which neighbours are already so kindly 
 warning us, me at home and Evan on the cars, 
 have not appeared in the road. In fact, I've a 
 glimmering idea that it is because we commuters 
 and others hold our servants responsible for bridg 
 ing certain inconveniences of living instead of ac 
 knowledging them and bearing the responsibility 
 ourselves, that makes domestic service such a vexed 
 question in America. Personally I do not know 
 of but a single family of all my acquaintances with 
 whom, were I a servant, I would be willing to live, 
 and I'm not yet sure that I would live with myself ; 
 but I shall probably decide this when the anni 
 versary of my return comes around. 
 
 In short, at present I feel at perfect liberty to 
 give myself to the garden, body and brain. I 
 think my soul always stays outdoors except at 
 night, when it watches my sleeping body. 
 
 After a few moments' silence, during which each 
 of us did some thinking, father said, " How would 
 you like a married man with a family as well, 
 to please you I won't call him a gardener, but a 
 ' general useful ' ? You know there are four or five 
 good living-rooms that were once used, over the 
 carriage-house. Perhaps a married man would have
 
 52 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 more ambition, and certainly more experience, and 
 his wife also might be occasionally useful." 
 
 "To a married man I have no possible objec 
 tion, but to having his family on the place, no, if 
 you please. There are doubtless very competent 
 married men and women, but they are rarely mar 
 ried to each other. Oh, father, do you remember 
 the last time those rooms were occupied ? You 
 surely haven't forgotten Peter Schmidt ? " 
 
 " No ; for though he insisted on straight lines, 
 worshipped cabbages, and slighted the flowers, he 
 was the most faithful worker we ever had or ever 
 shall have," he replied, very significantly. 
 
 " I beg pardon. I should have said, do you 
 remember, Mrs. Peter Schmidt," I hastened to 
 add. 
 
 At this, father laughed until the tears came to 
 his eyes, though there was a time when it was not 
 considered a laughing matter, and fled to his gig, 
 which Tim was driving around from the stable. I 
 following to bespeak for the next morning the man 
 with the shovel, who, by the way, is an infinitely 
 superior grade of being to the "man with the 
 hoe," who merely walks slowly along, shuffling his 
 inefficient tool.
 
 IV 
 
 THE AMERICANIZING OF PETER 
 SCHMIDT 
 
 October 28. Tim promises to furnish an "effee- 
 cient mon" for me, but holds out no hope that it 
 will be by to-morrow, asking at the same time if 
 I prefer a foreigner, an American born, or natural 
 ized. I replied that it is immaterial which, if the 
 man is capable in addition to being honest and 
 temperate. Chris had the two latter qualifications, 
 but they seemed rather to sap his vitality than to 
 be of any special advantage. Peter Schmidt, dear 
 old fellow, was honest, sober, and capable as 
 well ; but the methods his wife took to transform 
 and coerce his plodding, peasant mind and body 
 into what she considered an American, were the 
 cause of his downfall. 
 
 As to securing the services of a good native for 
 manual labour, it is quite out of the question in a 
 part of the country where the social centre is a 
 combination of factory and market town. There 
 are men who will " accommodate " for a few days 
 
 53
 
 54 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 or a week at ploughing, haying, or raking, but to 
 take a regular place for regular pay would be to 
 become the male equivalent of the " livin'-out girl," 
 and socially degrading to one owning a makeshift 
 house and a few acres of land. So, without trade 
 training, the native " chores " about at painting, 
 carpentering, raising a few vegetables, or letting 
 the shingles fall from his roofs and the land run 
 out until the elder children are old enough to work 
 in a factory, when they all move " over town," and 
 some old country peasant, either Celt, Dane, Pole, 
 or Hun, buys the place of the mortgagee, and begins 
 to pull it together on a wholly different plane. 
 
 It was on the first day of November and my 
 fourteenth birthday that Peter Schmidt and family 
 came to live with us. I was sitting on the pasture 
 fence cracking butternuts, which finger-dyeing occu 
 pation so absorbed me that I did not hear approach 
 ing footsteps, and was therefore startled by a voice 
 that asked in slow and inverted sentences, if the 
 " honoured doctor " lived near by. 
 
 Looking up, I saw a strange procession that 
 halted as the man, its leader, spoke. This man 
 was perhaps forty, though he might have been 
 either older or younger. His bent shoulders and 
 warped legs indicated the former age, while his
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 55 
 
 fresh complexion and wide-open though expression 
 less clear blue eyes, the latter. He was dressed 
 in typical ill-fitting shabby store clothes, but his 
 stout square boots and cap with a peaked visor 
 were evidently of foreign make. 
 
 Behind him was a woman a full head taller, thin, 
 long-armed, and bent about the shoulders. She 
 had dark hair and eyes, with the complexion and 
 the flat features which, when they appear in people 
 of the north countries of Europe, give either the 
 appearance of sadness or sulkiness. This woman's 
 expression was compounded of both. She did not 
 speak, but pulled her shawl together and stooped 
 to chide a little tow-haired boy of five or six who 
 was tugging at her hand. Behind the woman in 
 turn followed two girls of ten and twelve, swarthy 
 and flat featured as their mother, like whom they 
 were dressed in a clumsy way that had withal a 
 certain peasant picturesqueness. 
 
 While I was talking to the man, a small one-horse 
 wagon, of the pattern used by vegetable venders 
 in the town, rounded the corner ; in it were a few 
 very plain articles of household furniture, a large 
 bundle, doubtless containing the family feather bed, 
 and several small parcels neatly tied. 
 
 This was Peter Schmidt, his family, and posses-
 
 56 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 sions, coming by father's directions to be our 
 "gardener." He lived with us eight years before 
 his duties as an American citizen led him to seek 
 the more elevated position offered by a shoeshop. 
 
 When father told us Peter Schmidt's history, 
 Aunt Lot was stirred with practical pity, and, 
 always eager for any occupation that implied 
 house-cleaning, giving advice, or regulating other 
 people's affairs, instantly began to overturn the 
 attic for old furniture and such garments of ours 
 as might have escaped the general demand of those 
 who, coming to the hospital in rags, had even less 
 to wear on leaving. 
 
 In a couple of days the living-rooms over the 
 stable were resplendent, owing to a combination of 
 energy on the part of the Schmidt family themselves 
 in whitewashing, scrubbing, and window-washing, in 
 which even the small boy joined, the girls giving 
 deep-drawn " oh's " and " ah's " of admiration. 
 While the following Christmas the whole family 
 came into the hall before breakfast to give us the 
 season's greeting, each laden with a fat wreath made 
 of ground pine, that they had walked two miles to 
 the woods to gather, giving them as tokens of thank 
 fulness that " we now hass a home," as Mrs. Schmidt 
 said through tears that told of dark days.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 57 
 
 Father was exultant. Here at last was the 
 gratitude and appreciation that had too seldom 
 crowned his efforts to better his fellows. 
 
 Little by little, Peter told father of his past. It 
 seemed that since coming to this country sixteen 
 years before, either ill luck or an unseasonable 
 desire to better themselves, which really amounts to 
 the same thing, had kept them on the move. Their 
 very home-leaving had been ill judged, unpropitious, 
 and hurried, that Peter might escape army service 
 which would necessarily delay the early marriage 
 upon which Karen was set, she then being a fellow- 
 worker with him on a milk and cheese farm. 
 
 Peter ? Oh, Peter had at that time evidently 
 looked stoically upon matrimony as an estate not to 
 be entered hurriedly ; he would have preferred to go 
 alone to America, establish himself, and then send 
 for Karen. He already had the responsibility of 
 partially providing for his old mother, a widow who 
 still lived in a couple of rooms by the windmill 
 where his father had worked. As he said, " she was 
 homesick away from the sound of the sails going 
 round," and " I too," he added, " think no sound 
 can be made so fine as when the sails and the wind 
 struggle together and there is much wheat to grind." 
 Peter was a Hollander who loved his country in a
 
 58 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 patient, sluggish way, and would have preferred, 
 father thought, to have remained there all his days, 
 army service and all. 
 
 There are many ways of loving one's country, it 
 seems, as in other loves, the mental and the physical, 
 and his was love of the absolute ground, and had no 
 mental pride or consciousness. He had not the 
 faintest conception of the Netherlands' rise and 
 history ; the Spanish wars were as foreign to him as 
 the deluge ; his pride was not of the country's power 
 in commerce or art. He might have heard mention 
 of the names Rembrandt, van Dyck, Frans Hals, 
 Plantin, but they meant nothing, though he had 
 lived within a few hours' walk of Amsterdam and its 
 wonderful Rix Museum. His plodding mind waded 
 in the rich black soil that the plough turned over, 
 never rising above the bearded barley that grew 
 from it. He found greater beauty in the straight, 
 sluggish canals than in all the rushing, forest-banked 
 rivers in the world. He could not think quickly or 
 hurry, and the soil, was it not always there, at once 
 tangible and immovable, the one thing in which he 
 seemed to have full confidence ? In short, he was 
 peasant to the core, intelligently and contentedly 
 so. What a pity that he should be dragged away 
 and awakened, for of such is the strength of the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 59 
 
 earth. Surely" there is often something sad about 
 ambition. 
 
 What if the earth that grows the wheat, the 
 bread of the world, should insist that it was a finer 
 destiny to fill the flower pots that hold the plants in 
 a conservatory ? 
 
 Once in America, the Schmidts had at first worked 
 here and there until money enough was obtained to 
 carry them West to take up a farm hold. This 
 proved a failure, owing to the fact that Peter did 
 not understand the difference of methods, climate, 
 etc., and also lacked means to live while the land 
 was being improved and the first crop gathered. 
 After ten or twelve years of struggling, privation, 
 and chance work for others, they drifted slowly east 
 ward, eight children having been born to them, of 
 whom, owing to hardship and the fevers of new 
 countries, only four were living. Karen had then 
 worked out by the day in the factory town, taking 
 her baby with her and putting it to sleep in a clothes- 
 basket or any convenient nook, while she washed 
 and scrubbed. At last it also died, and then she 
 broke down completely and went to the hospital, 
 where father found her, and when her weary body 
 was rested and repaired he sent the family out 
 here.
 
 60 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 As Peter's work was chiefly with the soil, he was 
 content, the fruit and vegetables throve, the flowers 
 languished. As Aunt Lot kept but one maid, 
 Karen often helped us in emergencies, for a woman 
 likes to have a little pin money. In those days she 
 was always begging to do some little task in return 
 for the many ways in which we aided her, and Aunt 
 Lot took great pains in showing her how to cut and 
 fashion over my clothes for the girls, as I was at 
 least two sizes taller than either. How glad I am 
 that I am fairly tall and quite slender ; it is so con 
 venient to be able to have a long reach in tying up 
 vines, and then there is so much stooping to be done 
 in gardening, and if one is stout, the flesh must 
 always interfere like an impediment in a door- 
 hinge. 
 
 During four years, agriculturally speaking, we had 
 a time of peace and prosperity. Peter's ideas as to 
 beauty were not mine, but he was devoted to his 
 children, and the boy, his father's counterpart, was 
 much with him as he worked. The hay was cut 
 and cured as carefully as if the welfare of the 
 nation depended on it. The vegetables were rowed 
 up like soldiers on parade, and the grass edges were 
 faultless. It was Peter who suggested tilling an 
 unused field and growing potatoes and winter vege-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 61 
 
 tables to help out the scanty resources of the hospi 
 tal. Peter was slow, but oh, so reliable ! True, he 
 would insist upon shearing the roses and shrubs out 
 of all identity, like so many cropped heads, and the 
 most awful foliage beds were developed in his reign. 
 But I think, as I now look back, Aunt Lot aided and 
 abetted him. Also two gray drain tiles used as 
 vases and filled with sad lilac petunias appeared like 
 sentinels on either side of the walk from the road to 
 the porch. I protested, but Aunt Lot said that Mrs. 
 Schmidt suggested them and thought them grand, 
 and it might hurt her feelings to remove them. 
 
 With my new vision I see that was a fatal mis 
 take ; where service is concerned, when we hesitate 
 to protect our own rights, the dynasty will soon 
 crumble. 
 
 Father revelled in the man's wholesome enjoyment 
 of the earth, and of the mere planting and tilling. 
 "We need such labourers," he often used to say as 
 he watched Peter at work, " labourers for the wide 
 field and the great crop ; such men have made the 
 West. Our difficulty is that our Eastern labour is 
 too small and detailed, and we scorn plodding peasant 
 toil. 
 
 " I must tell Peter the opportunities of his class for 
 new world citizenship."
 
 62 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Alas, how citizenship and the way it is regarded 
 depends on those whose opinions first tinge the vision 
 of the immigrant, as well as upon the calibre of the 
 woman he marries. Sometimes when I think how 
 far wives often unconsciously warp the husband's 
 point of view, and cramp his worldly attitude, it 
 makes me shiver with fear of the responsibility. 
 
 Father talked to Peter, good wise talk, and in 
 course of time he took out his naturalization papers. 
 Karen also, who was far more alert than her hus 
 band, was a perpetual influence goading him to " be 
 American," but for different reasons. 
 
 She had made a friend in the village, a woman who 
 twenty years before, owing to a pertly pretty face, 
 had married far above her station. In consequence 
 her tongue had been since sharpened on the grind 
 stone of snubbing until she had become a sort of 
 village firebrand whom few could touch and escape a 
 scorching. 
 
 This woman was Karen's instructor in the language 
 of liberty which, according to her reading, was anar 
 chy, and it was from her standpoint and with her 
 precepts that Karen goaded Peter to "be American." 
 
 In the fifth year a change was perceptible, not yet 
 in the man, but in the woman of the household. Per 
 haps I should say women, for Marie and Trina (short
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 63 
 
 for Katrina) were fifteen and seventeen no longer 
 children, but domestic factors. 
 
 Karen had constantly begged Aunt Lot that when 
 Trina was old enough, she should be taken into the 
 household. So as she was now a well-grown girl, 
 Aunt Lot suggested that the time had come, only to 
 be surprised by the reply, " Trina has no mind to be 
 livin'-out girl ; she wish to get ' edication.' " 
 
 Aunt Lot was rather nettled at Karen's tone, but 
 father said education was a worthy desire, that he 
 would talk over the matter with the Schmidts, and see 
 what tastes the girls had, and try to advise them as 
 to the best channel. 
 
 He returned from the interview somewhat per 
 turbed, finding that Karen's idea of education was 
 purely superficial, being to learn as little as possible 
 of something to get into a store or become a type 
 writer, anything in short, to escape the stigma of 
 "livin' out," which she in some unaccountable way 
 had come to regard as akin to a crime. While, on 
 talking to the girls, he found that they were of the 
 hopeless, shiftless order, scarcely knowing on which 
 finger to place a thimble, about all they had learned 
 at the local public school being a desire to seem, 
 rather than the industry to be. 
 
 Then a demon entered the family, or perhaps it
 
 64 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 might better be called a microbe, as they came in 
 fashion about that time. It should have been bottled 
 and labelled "The social importance of clothes," a 
 disease as deadly as appendicitis and more prevalent. 
 
 Karen had, up to this time, lived much to herself, 
 dressing neatly but in the old world simplicity of her 
 class that well suited her ; for those whose gait has 
 been formed by the swinging of the wooden shoes 
 and the shoulders shaped by the milk-yoke, had best 
 beware of high heels and the fantastic fashions 
 descended from the French through the interpreta 
 tion of a factory town. One day Trina appeared in 
 a new but flimsy coat, the week after one of mine, 
 nicely cleaned and freshened with new collar and 
 cuffs, had been given her ; then Aunt Lot, thinking 
 some accident had befallen the garment, made 
 inquiry. 
 
 Karen's face took a threatening, sullen expression 
 that quite frightened Aunt Lot, while her black eyes 
 snapped, as she blurted out, " Trina have it slappit 
 at her in school dat her coat vas ole clothes and de 
 cuffs put on to make longer de sleeves. She cry 
 vith shame, and she shall not bear such." 
 
 Father insisted that Aunt Lot could not have 
 understood and that such nonsense was impossible, 
 but a little later on he was somewhat taken aback
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 65 
 
 by Karen's asking him to have a new front door put 
 to their apartments, because in going in the present 
 door the kitchen was seen in reaching the parlour. 
 
 Aunt Lot always insisted that father was to blame 
 for yielding the point, but that is neither here nor 
 there. 
 
 Callers began to drop in at the Schmidts' at all 
 times of day, wash days and all, in direct defiance 
 of country custom, and we often noticed that Peter, 
 instead of sitting down to a hot meal, carried his 
 dinner outside and ate it alone in one of the sheds, 
 or, in warm weather, under a tree. 
 
 Next I discovered that the callers were people for 
 whom Karen was doing cheap dressmaking in order 
 to obtain more money to " live like Americans." 
 Lace curtains appeared in the windows in due course, 
 and before long a parlour organ was bought and 
 squeezed in at the new front door, though not one 
 of the family could as much as whistle a tune. 
 
 Peter worked steadily on, growing more silent day 
 by day, and clinging closer to the companionship of 
 the little boy, who was merry as ever. Once father 
 asked Peter the cause of the change in his home life 
 and if he was content. But he only looked from 
 right to left like a dumb animal in pain, and did not 
 answer. One October night, shortly after this, as
 
 66 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 father was fastening his horse in the stable he heard 
 loud talking in shrill feminine accents. The voice 
 said in English, the home language now having been 
 dropped as an undesirable reminder of the past, 
 " Veil, if you don't tink I keeps tings right and cooks 
 to suit, den I can do vitout you altogeder. I vill 
 take the childrens avay and keep bourders, and I can 
 do many oder tings and have no need of you. Dis 
 besides, I vill see to it you shall send no more of your 
 vages to dat old voman who liked not me. Let 
 oder peoples keep her." 
 
 The " old woman " was Peter's mother, to whom he 
 sent the tiny stipend that kept her from being a 
 public charge. Karen somehow did manage to 
 stop the next remittances, and later it was rumoured 
 about by a fellow-countryman that the mother had 
 died in the Dutch equivalent of the Poor House. 
 
 Then Peter staid outdoors except absolutely at 
 night, scarcely tasting his cold, unpalatable food, and 
 the crisis came rapidly. 
 
 In a few days, owing to an emergency, Aunt Lot 
 asked Mrs. Schmidt to do a little washing for pay, 
 of course, as usual. She was always paid as if she 
 had been a wholly outside worker. The response 
 was a curt refusal owing to the fact that she was 
 making Trina a new dress for "a big dance over
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 67 
 
 town," but under her breath Aunt Lot averred she 
 heard her say, " I'm no servant. Peter, he a fool to 
 vork for the doctor, but I'm not hired, too." Aunt 
 Lot did not tell father of this, for it was quite enough 
 to take up things said aloud, that could not be 
 passed as unheard. 
 
 Mrs. Schmidt, though unconsciously, at last took 
 the fatal step and threw aside the protection of caste 
 to assume social responsibility by giving a party far 
 beyond her means, or rather, the Misses Schmidt gave 
 it. " Socials " and dances were of frequent occurrence 
 in the fall and winter months among the foreign 
 farming element, but none of this class were asked, 
 being now scorned by Karen as "pisans, vit no 
 ambishun." Classmates of both sexes from the 
 public school and the Lutheran Sunday-school were 
 alone chosen for this function which Karen's evil 
 genius argued would place the girls on a footing 
 in the local country society. Marie was now em 
 ployed in a flashy millinery store in the town where 
 her wages, called by her "salary," barely paid for 
 her shoes and her car fare. 
 
 Of course the firebrand who had for the past two 
 years guided the family affairs was mistress of 
 ceremonies. People came to and fro, and I found 
 myself almost avoiding going about the garden, for
 
 68 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 fear of appearing intrusive, so completely we were 
 enthralled, and so uncomfortable had the condition of 
 affairs become. That very morning Tim had given 
 a roundabout warning that if his stable precincts 
 were daily interfered with by the Schmidt women 
 there was no use in his trying to do his work. 
 
 During the afternoon there was much hammer 
 ing at the stable, to which Aunt Lot called father's 
 attention, but he merely laughed, and said he sup 
 posed they were decorating. We wondered ; for 
 the rooms, though comfortable and ample for dwell 
 ing purposes, were hardly suitable for a ball. 
 
 But when he returned at midnight, after a long 
 drive across the hills in a pouring rain that had 
 set in at dark, and discovered there was no place 
 where he could get under cover, he was angry 
 indeed. The vehicles from the carriage house were 
 standing out under the trees, carelessly covered from 
 the wet, while a somewhat dreary and spiritless 
 dance was going on in that building to the music 
 of harp and fiddle, the participants being chiefly an 
 undesirable class of factory hands, asked because 
 others had declined, and a few young people of 
 the neighbourhood who, evidently having come 
 from a kindly schoolmate feeling, looked conscious 
 and out of place. Father rang the stable bell for
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 69 
 
 Tim with a clang that startled us even in the 
 house, and when Tim ran out, white and scared, 
 pointed to the horse and chaise, and strode in with 
 the rare stern look on his face. 
 
 For an hour father and Aunt Lot talked, recall 
 ing the various omissions that had finally culmi 
 nated into absolute defiance, and decided justly that 
 whatever influence had changed the once crouch 
 ing, humble woman, she certainly now completely 
 dominated the man. That they could no longer 
 live on the place was decided then and there, but 
 father argued that if work and residence were sepa 
 rated, all might yet be well. Aunt Lot thought 
 differently, and yet she too pitied Peter, who, 
 though helpless to throw off the present condition, 
 was personally a valuable servant. 
 
 Father decided that in the morning he would have 
 a talk with Peter, and he went to bed dreading the 
 ordeal more than the severest surgical operation. 
 His temperament was not to wound except to the 
 better heal. In this case the result seemed dubious, 
 and to inflict or allow needless pain was a crime 
 in his eyes. 
 
 We had not finished breakfast before Aunt Lot 
 was very unnecessarily reminding father of the 
 duty before him and of everything he must say,
 
 ;o THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 when a knock sounded at the front door. This 
 almost immediately opened, and in walked Peter, 
 followed by his wife. 
 
 Father afterward said that he thought at first 
 they had come to make some explanation, but a 
 glance told me otherwise. 
 
 Peter had evidently been slowly and persistently 
 worked up to a terrible still-white heat which almost 
 made him believe himself wronged, and Karen, her 
 eyes glistening, and her head darting forward from 
 her bent shoulders like a flat-headed adder, kept 
 goading him, allowing him no time for thought or 
 retreat, though his frank wording of the grievance 
 was not what she would have had it. 
 
 "Ve move avay," he gasped without preamble 
 and looking at no one. " Not much people came to 
 de barty, and my girls have it slappit at dem dat 
 dey are no better dan pigs to live in vit a stable. 
 Yes, ve move avay to-morrow, mein Gott, to-day 
 even." 
 
 Father replied quietly, looking only at Peter, that 
 it was exactly the thing he was about to propose, and 
 that Peter might take a few days to rearrange his 
 affairs before continuing the fall ploughing. 
 
 " Ploughing ! Ploughing iss it ? " shrieked Karen, 
 stung to added fury by being completely ignored, and
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 71 
 
 by the fact that the failure of her social hopes had 
 been openly confessed. " He vorks no more and he 
 ploughs no more for you. No more vill he be a 
 servant to any man, nor vill I. He is American 
 citizen already, next month he vote. But for you are 
 ritsh " (what a hiss she put into the word !) " he can 
 have as much say in dis place as you ! 
 
 " Yes, and you tread us down ; you make us to live 
 in a stable and bring disgrace on my girls, so they be 
 slappit at, and dat vomans dere " (pointing her finger 
 at poor trembling Aunt Lot) " she tink I'm a servant 
 vomans too, and last week even she dare ask me to 
 do a vash. 
 
 " But dere are folks so much ritsher dan you dat 
 you are nobody. You tink you can keep down de 
 poor in stables like dey do in de ole country, but you 
 cannot cannot, mein Gott. Peter, he vill vork in a 
 shop and be no more livin'-out mans, to shame his 
 girls." Then she shook her bony fist almost under 
 Aunt Lot's nose as father stepped between. How 
 they went out none of us knew. My next recol 
 lection was seeing father go to his medicine closet, 
 pour whiskey into a glass with a trembling hand, and 
 without adding water hold it to Aunt Lot's lips, and 
 as she took a sip and choked feebly, he swallowed 
 the rest, went into his office and closed the door,
 
 72 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 while she began to cry softly, saying between 
 sniffs : 
 
 " So many years furniture clothes milk, 
 vegetables took care of them measles 
 whooping-cough that good carpet good as new 
 that front door never will we never will trust 
 anybody again ! " 
 
 But of course we shall, you know ! 
 
 Thus Peter Schmidt passed from the open fields to 
 the shoeshop. 
 
 On election day father saw him at the polls. In 
 the evening when driving in the moonlight past some 
 land that Peter had ploughed deep and left in great 
 furrows for the frost to sweeten, father saw a strange 
 object on the ground. Stopping, he crossed the road 
 to see if it was some creature or merely a shadow. 
 
 It was Peter stretched in a fresh furrow, his head 
 buried in his arms, his whole body shaken by sobs, 
 while crouching trembling by the wall was the little 
 boy. 
 
 Report reached us that late the same night Peter, 
 mingling with his new comrades of the shop, was half 
 urged, half forced to drink with them to honour his 
 first vote. The rank liquor was strange to him, he 
 became deeply drunk, and half led, half dragged, he 
 was left upon his doorstep.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 73 
 
 This is why the living-rooms at the stable have 
 remained unoccupied and why I prefer that they 
 shall be so unless, well, unless Crumpled Tim takes a 
 bride. 
 
 Yes, I know, I suppose that I shall yet be disap 
 pointed in Tim after all these years, and that his 
 queer nubby feet will prove to be cloven. But if 
 Sisyphus was so persistent in rolling a stone up hill, 
 why shouldn't we be equally patient in keeping our 
 opinion of human nature on the up grade?
 
 V 
 
 A RAINY DAY 
 
 MORNING 
 
 October 31 (morning). Three days' delay, but 
 Chris has gone, and October wearing goloshes is 
 quietly plodding down the road to the rhythmical 
 patter of steady rain. 
 
 Tim has secured a " general useful " with a round, 
 cheerful countenance and an excellent personal ref 
 erence from the next town. In fact, Bertie the 
 newcomer, in addition to knowing which end of the 
 shovel belongs in his hand and which in the ground, 
 professes to be able to mend tools and tinker about 
 in a truly encouraging fashion, having in fact 
 brought a well-equipped tool chest with him. Even 
 now on the day of his advent, I can hear him pound 
 ing away in the little tool house that holds the 
 garden necessities, after the manner of a thrifty 
 man who uses rainy days for tool-mending and such 
 like work. 
 
 It is very necessary that the " general useful " 
 74
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 75 
 
 should be able to use hammer, saw, and glass 
 cutter, as well as rake and spade, or the commuter 
 in whose garden he digs will be buried by an autum 
 nal leaf fall of small bills, more deeply than were 
 the babes in the wood by the well-intentioned 
 robins. 
 
 Chris the literary seems to have massacred the 
 old garden implements and cremated their remains, 
 for of whole tools there are next to none, while the 
 usual array of halt and maimed are likewise missing, 
 so that Evan has ordered a fresh supply, all of which 
 I must list in the special part of my garden book 
 that treats of his godmother's wedding gift of fifty 
 pounds for something " useful and instructive " and 
 what we did with it, so that we may judge, when the 
 account is closed, if the conditions have been com 
 plied with. 
 
 Bertie is now cleaning out a jumble of broken 
 flower pots, old seeds, and boxes holding odds and 
 ends of Paris green, hellebore, and various other 
 compounds that bring death to bugs and sneezing 
 to humans; and he is also going to whitewash the 
 walls of the little building. One comfort about 
 Evan is that he not only knows exactly what he 
 wishes done, but is able to leave directions in such 
 a form that they cannot possibly be misunderstood.
 
 76 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 When you live in the country and your husband 
 goes daily to town, you will soon recognize this trait 
 as akin to genius. 
 
 Already I can see the complete tool house in my 
 mind's eye from simply hearing Evan's directions to 
 Bertie. There are to be racks for holding pots 
 graded according to size ; wooden pegs across which 
 the various rakes, hoes, etc., can be laid ; hooks for 
 the water-pots and grass edging shears; corner 
 shelves for holding the measuring line (to be used 
 for vegetables, only I shan't allow it in the flower 
 garden), twine, trowel, weeders, while under these 
 is room for the two lawn-mowers, the wide for gen 
 eral use, the narrow for borders. On the opposite 
 side a wide shelf either for potting, cutting, or to 
 hold the flower jars when I'm filling them for the 
 house, and above the shelf, hung between leather 
 loops (made of an old rein) pruning-shears, flower 
 scissors, a hammer, a saw, and a bag of assorted 
 nails and tacks are hung like articles in a dressing- 
 case. 
 
 Bertie is a Dane, quite familiar with the Eng 
 lish words necessary for asking and receiving direc 
 tions, but fortunately not with those used either in 
 lengthy discussions or literary dialogues. 
 
 Evan suggests that we now have all the human
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 77 
 
 material on the place necessary for spontaneous 
 combustion, or a race riot, and really it is an inter 
 national mixture, much like the general population 
 and compounded by circumstances alone. 
 
 Tim, driver and stableman, Scotch and violently 
 of the Dissenting Church. 
 
 Bertie, Danish, general useful, religion probably 
 lacking. 
 
 Martha Corkle, cook pro tern., awaiting develop 
 ments, English, aggressively of the Established 
 Church. 
 
 Delia, waitress and office maid, Irish- American, 
 violently Roman Catholic. 
 
 Elizabeth (cook until Martha's advent), laundry 
 and dairymaid pro tern., native and Methodist. 
 
 Martha Corkle, before whom the necessity of 
 tolerance of religious opinion and race was men 
 tioned, came to me this morning, full of dignity 
 and responsibility, and said, 
 
 " Mrs. Evan " (she never accords me my last 
 name, that honour belonging to the portly mother of 
 ten and wife of our elder brother, the vicar), " I 
 hope that you do not think I shall demean myself 
 by taking notice of opinions held in my kitchen or 
 outside; that is unless things are disrespected 
 which are my vitals, though of course it would
 
 78 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 serve better for authority if they " (servants, not 
 vitals) "were all of the Church and came in to 
 prayers every morning as they used when I served 
 at the rectory. Then a word at all was a word 
 against the family as much as me, Mrs. Evan. Not 
 that I holds you responsible, ma'am, not at all, and I 
 feel for you, ma'am, for what can be done in a place 
 where there is no tenantry to be brought up to ser 
 vice, and all the help comes from different places 
 and reared on disagreeing victuals, as it were ? It 
 all seems as wild-like to me as Australia, where 
 my brother Joe bides, savin' the lack of those 
 jumpin' kangaroos, and I'm always expectin' them. 
 No, Mrs. Evan, on my word, I shan't contend 
 except for vitals, and no disrespect intended, ma'am." 
 
 How steadily it rains ! a wholesome fall storm that 
 the ground absorbs. Certainly gardening makes one 
 conscious of the great variety of ways in which the 
 work of moistening the soil is done. To some people 
 all rains are alike. In the city I have never heard 
 any distinction made except that of a storm or a 
 shower. I well remember being ill one spring at 
 the planting season and listening to the rain as I 
 lay in bed. I asked a town-bred maid whom we
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 79 
 
 chanced to have, what sort of rain it was. She 
 looked blankly at me, then out of the window as 
 if hardly comprehending my meaning and replied, 
 "Just plain rain, miss, there isn't any thunder." 
 A countrywoman would have said either a grow 
 ing, a cold, a washout, a spring filling, or a smart 
 rain, according to the facts. 
 
 I am sitting in the long, unsealed attic that, is 
 lighted with a dormer window at either end. A 
 comfortable open-fronted wood stove glows away 
 by the chimney that fills the centre of the loft. 
 This has been my playroom ever since I left the 
 nursery and those far-away mother arms slipped 
 from about me. Now that I've come back I think 
 that I appreciate its privacy more than ever, and 
 keep it for a playroom still. Why may not grown 
 ups have playrooms where they can throw off con 
 ventionalities and restraint, be silly or only idle, 
 and romp either mentally or physically as they 
 please? The garden of course is the best place 
 for these wild moods in seasonable weather, but 
 even then one needs an indoor retreat, a place to 
 lie flat on an old, unhurtable sofa, and think alter 
 nately of everything and nothing, well out of the 
 reach of sudden callers. 
 
 What odious things callers are ! I love my friends
 
 8o THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 dearly, but friends never call. They simply flit in, 
 knowing the times and seasons when you are at 
 liberty, or being mistaken and scenting anything 
 out of joint, they pat the dogs, pick up a book to 
 borrow, a flower to smell, and flit out again, as if 
 that alone was the object of their visit, leaving you 
 comfortable and unembarrassed. Or, finding that all 
 is well, they draw off gloves, unpin hat, and stay to 
 luncheon without forcing you through the responsi 
 bility of asking them, a relief when you are dubi 
 ous of the meal. Unless people have this tact they 
 can never really be called friends or safely asked 
 to come freely within the sacred home precincts. 
 
 A country doctor's daughter, like a minister's 
 wife, has many curious experiences in this respect, 
 and my time of trial has arrived. 
 
 In truth the two days' gap in my gardening op 
 erations has been filled to overflowing with callers, 
 well-intentioned folk who would be friends if they 
 but knew how, people of many grades, all kindly 
 eager to welcome me home, and advise and ask 
 questions varied with remarks about Aunt Lot's 
 marriage and queries as to whether I didn't think 
 father had aged during my absence. 
 
 I had intended giving a sort of parish high tea 
 a little later on, bracing myself to answer questions
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 81 
 
 en masse, fortified by a fine new gown and Evan to 
 share both admiration and criticism. Not that we 
 exactly enjoy this sort of thing. We should much 
 prefer saving up and giving them a musical after 
 noon, Evan even perhaps being coaxed to play the 
 violin himself. But when you wish to entertain 
 people, you must give them what they, not what 
 you like, and what that is remains to be discovered. 
 However, this festival is still before me, while the 
 questions and advice have set me to thinking and 
 make me quite reconciled to spending this rainy 
 day in the comfortable fastness of the attic. 
 
 Before I went away Aunt Lot represented the 
 family, but now one and all, patients and neigh 
 bours, recognize me as mistress of the house, 
 and are prepared to hold me socially responsible. 
 This is a great change for the young person who, 
 three years ago, never could be prevailed upon to 
 take a table at the annual fair or to make cake 
 for the monthly sale upon the proceeds of which 
 the subsistence of one of the three village ministers 
 depended. 
 
 I have been freely reminded of what a good cake 
 maker Aunt Lot was, and I'm trembling lest Martha 
 Corkle's confections should fall below her standard, 
 as I've promised three loaves, a pan of cookies,
 
 82 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 and a braised ham for next week's harvest-home 
 supper, and they must be faultless, for the supper is 
 for the hospital. 
 
 A school friend of my mother's, a very charming 
 woman, but rather a borrower of trouble, raised a 
 more serious point by saying that, glad as she was 
 to see me back, she hoped that I had not used undue 
 influence to take Evan from his native land, as she 
 thought such experiments dangerous and against 
 the nature of things. I'm afraid that my answer 
 was rather heated. It is not against nature for the 
 female to have the say as far as possible in choosing 
 the location of the home. 
 
 I am American to my finger-tips, though I fully 
 recognize the fascination and protective atmosphere 
 of old world tradition, but as the old proverb says, 
 "Every bird finds its own nest charming." Now, 
 as a matter of course, all birds'-nests are not equally 
 well located or built. The oriole weaves a sky cradle 
 moated by the free air, the cuckoo throws together 
 a few sticks in a bush each to her taste. The only 
 bird despised and scorned of all is the outcast, the 
 cowbird, to whom, having none of her own, all nests 
 are equal and a matter of indifference. The only 
 being so despised is the songster without a nest to 
 uphold.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 83 
 
 My nest is America, Evan's England, and the 
 interweaving of the two makes the most logical com 
 bination possible. But why should I expect Evan 
 to move his building materials overseas to join mine 
 instead of the reverse? Because of a fact in the 
 law, also of the joyous republic of Birdland, to which 
 I would call the attention of all conscientious women 
 with foreign husbands. // is the female who always 
 chooses the nesting site. Nature rules that the loca 
 tion of the home is of more vital importance to her 
 whose life is of the home, and nests are also usually 
 located in the region of the best food supply there 
 fore America! 
 
 Some of my guests expressed curiosity as to what 
 I should do for amusement in such a quiet place, 
 as if I had not been able to amuse myself in years 
 gone, and I foolishly unfolded to them in part my 
 garden hopes, which they straightway translated 
 according to their different temperaments to mean 
 everything from an Italian garden with terraces, 
 statues, a fountain, and clipped green walls to a 
 market garden wherein Evan was to raise cabbages 
 and afterward peddle them for a living. This last 
 notion went the rounds from the Village Gossip via
 
 84 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 the Village Liar to the Emporium, from whence it 
 was freely distributed up the road, and finally found 
 its way to Evan on the cars. The Emporium is not 
 a shop, as you might think, but a very genteel middle- 
 aged widow of comfortable means whose house 
 stands directly at the head of the village street, so 
 that people taking the road that branches on the 
 right toward the town, or on the left that goes up 
 through the farming region, must equally pass her 
 door. Thus, being in a position to hear and collect 
 news, she is also conveniently located for its dis 
 tribution and constitutes herself local news agent, 
 an occupation she greatly enjoys, and quite safely, 
 as she keeps her own skirts clear by never guaran 
 teeing her wares and always premising a bit of gos 
 sip by, " I don't know if it's true, but they do say," 
 etc., etc. 
 
 I knew exactly what sort of flowers I meant to 
 have, though I had not as yet quite formulated 
 their grouping so as to explain it glibly to strangers. 
 I want a purely American garden, which may be 
 interpreted as anything and everything that will 
 grow in our sparkling but capricious climate; also 
 everything is to be in plenty no single plants, but 
 great masses and jungles of flowers without bare 
 ground showing between.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 85 
 
 Evan has sketched me a rough map of the garden, 
 showing how the ground could be utilized to the 
 best advantage without changing its characteristics, 
 which were those that best harmonized with the 
 house. This, without being an antique, is of that 
 respectable no-period style of the forties, when we 
 began to forsake good, foreign models, and grope 
 for ourselves a style that is best summed up in 
 the words Early American. Strange to say, his 
 plan does not satisfy me. It is the dearest, sunniest, 
 homiest house in the world, and yet to turn the acre 
 of ground that immediately surrounds it into the copy 
 of an Italian, Dutch, or old English garden would 
 be like enclosing it in a practical joke so cruel as to 
 wound its most sacred sensibilities. Quite like prof 
 fering Uncle Sam himself a cardinal's hat and cloak 
 for daily use, or forcing him to wear his own beaver 
 with the uniform of a French field marshal. 
 
 " What is an American garden ? I never heard 
 off such a thing," asked Mrs. Jenks-Smith, the good- 
 natured chatelaine of the new show place, The Bluffs, 
 on the river-bank, to which Chris has transferred his 
 talent. I told her that I used the term in relation to 
 my bit of garden ground framed in the hillside 
 woods, of which it had originally been a part ; 
 that it was to be itself, and not distorted into a feeble
 
 86 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 imitation of the classic gardens of other days and 
 times ; that I would not have it tricked out with the 
 wearisome, formal, tartlike beds that caused Bacon 
 to groan, even if the cost did not make such a 
 thing impossible for commuters of moderate means. 
 The last reason was within her comprehension. 
 
 " I know such things are very expensive," she 
 continued, with a sigh. " You wouldn't believe what 
 our Italian garden cost, with digging out and 
 filling in. My dear, we had to fill up thirteen feet 
 deep in one spot, and piping the water for the pools, 
 and after that the engine to run the fountain, and 
 the electric plant to light up at night. For of course 
 the trees are so young yet that there's no shade, 
 and it's perfectly impossible to go out there in the 
 daytime. And it was so thoughtless too in our 
 landscapist, this season he had yellow flowers that 
 close at night put in one of the most conspic 
 uous places, and so some of the best effects are 
 spoiled. 
 
 " I think I shall have to coax your husband next 
 season to fit us up with a list of night-blooming 
 things. I suppose he'd be reasonable to a neighbour. 
 By the way, my dear, has it occurred to you what a 
 grand advertisement for him it would be to have a good 
 showy Italian garden on this hillside and his name and
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 87 
 
 business address on a rustic sign just below ? It can 
 be seen a mile off from the cars. 
 
 " Garden wouldn't match the house? Neither did 
 ours, but we put on a whole new outside all stucco, 
 you know, and the Prince who visited us last summer 
 said he only had to close his eyes to think himself in 
 Italy." 
 
 Verily, of such trials as these are calls composed ; 
 and I have to keep my temper and not say a 
 word of what rises to my lips, but she would not 
 have understood if I had, poor soul, and so I let 
 her clatter on. 
 
 " Not but all those old flowers that you've had 
 growing for ages down yonder have come in fash 
 ion again. Yes, isn't it strange they're quite in the 
 swing, and those hollyhock roots that are scat 
 tered everywhere would cost a lot if you tried to 
 replace them. 
 
 "Why, child, nature and all that stuff that you 
 and the doctor always thought so much about and 
 spent so much time over has come right in since 
 you've been away. There is a princess or a duchess 
 or somebody (anyway her name's in an almanac 
 a patent medicine, I suppose, but I don't remember 
 what she took it for), and she lives in Germany and 
 is named Elizabeth, and she's written a book about
 
 88 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 her garden, and it made such things the rage. I 
 read it all through, thinking I'd get a great many 
 swagger points, but I didn't, that is, not on gar 
 dening; but she was so chic, just did everything she 
 wanted to and never got rattled, and her house ran 
 itself, except giving out the sausages, and she 
 only looked at them. Her husband didn't count 
 for much more than furniture, for he liked cab 
 bages and wouldn't dance, so how could he? But 
 the children were so useful always said some 
 thing bright at the right time. But then, she had 
 an unusual bringing-up and said her prayers in 
 French while her mother went to parties, so 
 you'd expect she'd be different. 
 
 " Now you'll be right in it and not thought so 
 queer as once. And as for birds, bird study's all 
 the rage. I've stopped wearing feathers anyway 
 until the excitement dies down. We've stopped 
 driving birds out of the fruit, and put up boxes to 
 draw them. They won't come in them, though, 
 because your father says the rooms aren't separate 
 and the openings draw a draft through. Though 
 I call that going a little too far, as if birds that fly 
 all day in the air can't stand a draft at night. In 
 the spring when we return here I'm going to have 
 a bird class, and a professor to take us out and 
 point out the birds.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 89 
 
 " It's awfully nice, my dear, much easier than 
 giving a garden party, no trouble, no fuss, man 
 aged like a Cook's tour in Europe. He tells you 
 everything you ought to see, so you don't have 
 to think, you know. I went once this year across 
 the river where I was visiting. There were twenty 
 ladies in such becoming outing costumes, and such 
 a delicious lunch, served quite in the woods, my 
 dear. When we were eating we saw a quail ! Yes, 
 with its feathers on and all. Did you ever know 
 anything so appropriate ? 
 
 "We learned two other birds besides, a blue 
 Jane, and the other was a red-eyed virago" [vireo]. 
 " I remembered the name as so appropriate because 
 the bird sang or scolded, I don't know which you 
 would call it, all the time we were lunching." 
 
 As I think of that well-meaning, awful woman 
 I nearly choke, and it is a relief to hear Delia 
 creaking upstairs with my luncheon, which, as 
 father has gone across country on a consultation, I 
 am going to have spread on the window seat as of 
 old when it rained and I was housed.
 
 VI 
 
 A RAINY DAY 
 
 AFTERNOON 
 
 October 31 (afternoon). I have already declared 
 that I am about to try the joyous uncertainty of an 
 American Garden. I desire the most flowers at the 
 least cost, as befits the frugal wife of a commuter. 
 Flowers for the table, flowers to go to town with 
 Evan and whisper home to him as he sits in his 
 office. Flowers for village brides, for the children, 
 and for church festivals, and flowers to make the 
 silent journeys from the hospital, that some must take, 
 less dreary for those who follow them. 
 
 I know what I may expect and what I must not. 
 I do not seek to duplicate Kew Garden on the side 
 lawri, or to start an elaborate scheme and en 
 deavour to copy in a few years what has taken gen 
 erations of old-world growth to produce ; for like the 
 copy of an old master the imitation garden must 
 lack the freedom of touch of the original, and before 
 time has mellowed it, the unrest that is in a sense 
 
 90
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 91 
 
 one of our moulding forces will have pushed the 
 mimic garden into other hands before it is even ripe. 
 But any one may have an American garden, and it 
 is such as these alone that from their simplicity and 
 the love born of their making may be kept from gen 
 eration to generation. 
 
 However simple this garden of mine is to be, I 
 must see its shaping before I begin even to plant my 
 bulbs, or confusion will be my portion. A little mis 
 take now may mean a year's delay. 
 
 O my Garden of Dreams ! do not vanish when I 
 am ready to embody you. This morning father 
 gave me mother's garden journal from the little 
 trunk under the eaves. To-night is Hallow-e'en ! 
 Who knows but if I sit here and look out over the 
 leafless garden that was, that a vision of the new 
 will come from between the morocco covers ? 
 
 This quiet rain is very soothing to my impatience, 
 and the little splashes that drop from the eaves to 
 the piazza roof below with first a single and then a 
 double drip, as the gutter is more or less full, seem to 
 say, Wait, wait, wait, Patience, patience, patience, in 
 a coaxing way. 
 
 A fair amount of damp and rain is rather good for
 
 92 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 me, otherwise my spirits keep so volatile that they 
 would often lead my body a sad chase if it were 
 always sunny weather. 
 
 In spite of the delay in planting, this day is a 
 perfect boon, ministering to me in the same degree 
 as does fresh air, a drink of water, or sleep at other 
 times. 
 
 It is also a pleasure to be in the attic again. One 
 may marry and leave, and life seems wholly changed, 
 but a room remains the same, year in and year out. 
 The furniture consists of a hammock, divers trunks 
 and chests, one an odd little affair from which the 
 journals came, covered with the mottled skin of the 
 hair seal, the key to which father wears on his chain, 
 an ample and antique haircloth lounge, two shabby 
 but hospitable chairs, a cupboard, and an old library 
 table that makes up in drawers and pigeonholes for 
 what it lacks in varnish. At first the drawers are 
 obstinate and decline to open. Here in one are 
 papers of seeds and, of all things, a string of Dan'l's 
 hickory-nut beads with my initial cut on the biggest 
 or king bead, as we used to call it. Truly, I am 
 growing old ! 
 
 There is a peculiar odour in this attic on rainy 
 days that is as much a part of it as the smell of 
 the hickory logs in the stove, the familiar furniture,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 93 
 
 and the view from the window. During the past 
 two years when I have closed my eyes, led by 
 memory I have gone from room to room of the ram 
 bling house, and trodden every inch of the home 
 soil from the path beneath the Mother Tree in the 
 garden to the farther side of the field toward the 
 bars where the wild apple blossoms make a rosy 
 wall. When I arrived at the attic, the room and 
 the odour always came together, the pungent, waxy 
 smell of wasps ! 
 
 To-day, in addition to wasps and wood smoke, 
 a third tincture is added, wet dogs ! Bluff is 
 here as a matter of course, and owing to his long 
 hair and affectionate disposition, his fragrance is 
 the most in evidence of the five. It has been very 
 amusing to watch Bluff, for his perturbation of 
 mind as to whether he should follow father or 
 me is singular. The first week he bounced wildly 
 hither and thither as if he had lost his wits, not 
 being able to decide what to do ; but during the 
 past few days he has adhered to an evidently 
 thought-out plan of following the Stanhope in the 
 morning and staying with me in the afternoon, 
 that is, unless I then go out also, in which case 
 he continues to follow until he begins to lag, and 
 we stop and pull him into the gig, where he lies
 
 94 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 blissfully content at my feet, occasionally giving my 
 shoes a furtive and affectionate lick as he used to 
 the birds he retrieved. 
 
 Pat, the wire-haired terrier, was a six-weeks 
 puppy when I went away. He had been given 
 to father by a dog breeder in the next village, in 
 an outburst of gratitude for a little bit of deft 
 surgery that he had done in the goodness of his 
 heart for a pet dog which the man loved with the 
 intensity that some rough natures feel for dumb 
 animals. There was no veterinary surgeon in the 
 neighbourhood, and father was always willing to 
 aid animals where his knowledge was applicable, re 
 gardless of professional criticism, though he would 
 not accept fees for such services. 
 
 The natural result had been that there was never 
 a dearth of animals about the place. I have always 
 counted from one to half a dozen dogs at my 
 heels since babyhood, and it was invariably a small 
 dog with a blanket pinned on shawl fashion that 
 rode in my little carriage instead of the orthodox 
 doll. 
 
 It was not to be expected that Pat should re 
 member me, and in truth he did not. Bluff, how 
 ever, had evidently told him all the facts of the 
 case and impressed him in my favour ; for he is now
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 95 
 
 continually sneaking away from Tim, with whom he 
 has always lived at the stable, and nosing me out. 
 Then when I am found, he stands with his body 
 drawn backward, one ear cocked and the other 
 lopping over, a grin on his homely, hairy face, as 
 with a sort of twinkle of the eye he gives a few 
 short barks, as much as to say, " Did you think 
 you could hide from such a thing as a red-haired 
 Irish terrier by the name of Pat?" 
 
 He is a respecter of dog law, however, and never 
 ventures to lie on my feet when Bluff is by. Senior 
 ity rules in dog-land, where the oldest resident, be he 
 great or small, strong or feeble, quarrelsome or easy 
 going, is King and the final authority on matters of 
 etiquette. No one disputes his rule, that is, no full- 
 grown dog of gentlemanly instincts ; of course the 
 gambols of puppies do not count. Sedate old dogs 
 always tolerate them, sometimes administering a very 
 mild cuff when awakened from after-dinner naps by 
 having their ears chewed by the restless pups. But 
 quite as often they sit blinking and gratified with the 
 antics, wearing very much the same expression as 
 a big human whose hair is pulled and mouth pried 
 open by a rollicking pink-fisted baby. 
 
 Bluff's field companion, Lark, though only half his 
 age, is lying almost under the stove; his soft white
 
 96 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 coat lightly touched with black is in a sad condition, 
 being thickly matted with burrs. 
 
 He forgot himself last evening and his dignity as a 
 bird-dog, to go out with some farmers and their 
 clever mongrel curs with whom he was acquainted, 
 on a coon hunt. The poor fellow didn't even get a 
 sniff at the coon, but brought home half the burrs 
 and sticktights this side of the charcoal camp, mak 
 ing a nice bit of work for me; for as soon as he is 
 rested, I must get him in shape again with the aid of 
 an oily comb. Then Tim can wash him, but Tim is 
 too rough with a comb. You mustn't lunge at the 
 silky coat of a beautiful Gordon setter with the same 
 vigorous swish that is used to curry a horse. 
 
 The last two dogs of the group are twins, young 
 fox hounds of something under a year, and full of 
 promise. They have good bone, and are coated in 
 white and tan with a shading of black that brings 
 out their points. Their drooping ears are well set, 
 and their eyes of lustrous softness seem to follow 
 every movement that I make. This is their first visit 
 to the attic and its rainy-day comfort, so they are 
 lying humbly on the outside of the stove circle as 
 befits newcomers. 
 
 They belong to Evan and me, having been sent to 
 welcome us on our return by a countryman of his in
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 97 
 
 a southern state who keeps quite a pack and does 
 cross-country hunting. Such fox hunting as we 
 have in the back country here is an annual combina 
 tion of sport and dire necessity. When the red foxes 
 of the heavily brushed lowlands that divide the hills 
 grow aggressive with keen autumn appetite and 
 haunt the chicken yards, then the sporting farmers 
 and a few others who have energy and good legs and 
 lungs set out with dogs and guns, drive to the point 
 nearest the holes, tie up, then take to their feet ; and 
 when the dogs, a mixture of rabbit dogs, coon curs, 
 and a half dozen real hounds, have started the fox, 
 the men join the chase afoot, finally shooting the fox 
 when it is cornered. 
 
 I'm afraid that it will be a long time before Evan 
 can be brought to this style of hunting ; for shooting 
 a fox is a crime in England, where it is considered 
 more sportsmanlike to let the dogs rend it. But in 
 this rough and tumble region of rock ledges and 
 gullies, cross-country riding is an impossibility, and 
 so we take the shortest cut to the end to rid our 
 selves, or at least keep down the prowlers. The 
 Humane Society once urged father to introduce the 
 custom of trapping instead, as it expressed it, of 
 " teaching one animal to chase another " ; but some 
 how it was very unpopular, the foxes wouldn't be
 
 98 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 caught, and all that the people accomplished was 
 to catch each other's dogs, who went hunting on 
 their own account. 
 
 Be this as it may, Bugle and Tally-ho have become 
 intelligent members of the family in a short time, and 
 made their first trip up two flights of stairs in a very 
 creditable manner without undue bumping. How 
 they will go down is another matter. If they hesi 
 tate, Bluff will probably push them, for he gave both 
 Lark and Pat their first lessons in stair climbing. 
 
 The clouds are breaking away, and I think my 
 mind is also clearing as regards my garden. I will 
 let it keep its inheritance. The Mother Tree shall 
 be its keynote. 
 
 From these two windows I gain not only a bird's- 
 eye view of the stretch of our own land, once a farm 
 lying a little aside the top of one of a series of slop 
 ing hills, but also its relation to the surrounding 
 country. 
 
 The house stands higher than the road, from which 
 it is divided by some great elms, clusters of shrubs, 
 and a bit of grass. This bank is kept from falling 
 into the road by a wall, the stones of which are 
 hidden by a tangle of honeysuckle. At the north a 
 driveway to the stable makes the division from a strip 
 of woodland from which the underbrush has been
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 99 
 
 trimmed. This wood straggles in a half circle 
 toward west and south, out into a hillside pasture. 
 Back of the house is the vegetable garden plotted in 
 neat squares, edged with fruit bushes and trees, on 
 the farther side of which lie the long tangled beds 
 of mother's hardy flowers. 
 
 These beds start at the Mother Tree at the north 
 west corner. On the right the higher ground makes 
 a sort of wall, against which honeysuckle has been 
 let to run wild. On the left the ground is level. The 
 walk falls gently with the curve of the land until it 
 stops abruptly at what was once a strawberry bed, 
 but is now a flat bit of grass perhaps fifty feet 
 square, beyond which is the wild land, only broken 
 by the old cart track and a meandering cowpath 
 that threads through hemlocks, birches, and cedars 
 to a disused bar gate. 
 
 Behind the apple tree, screening it from the 
 stable, is a stiff arbour made picturesque by sturdy 
 climbing roses that have been long unpruned. One 
 thing is certain, the hardy beds are in a charming 
 spot, with a high background on one side for the 
 taller plants, and open a lovely vista from the seat 
 under the tree and down over the fields. This much 
 shall remain, the great clumps of herbaceous 
 flowers transplanted, thinned out and alcoved by
 
 zoo THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 shrubs making a sort of cloister walk from the past 
 through the present to the future. 
 
 How everything material and spiritual, if it is well 
 rounded, groups itself into the mystic three. Past, 
 present, and future. God, nature, man. Father, 
 mother, child. 
 
 Ah, it is shaping, my Garden of Dreams ! The 
 eye of the garden shall be the sundial, that bit from 
 Evan's past blending with mine. 
 
 Though I dislike a set straight garden above all 
 things, Evan says that a bit of formality often clari 
 fies wildness and gives it focus, so some beds of 
 summer flowers around the sundial, with grass left 
 between for paths, will make a restful break in 
 the view. Beyond, we might continue a plant-edged 
 walk in the wake of the cowpath quite down to the 
 old bars, and turn them into a stile. However I 
 must not plan too fast, but leave beyond the dial to 
 Evan. That is the future part of the dream. 
 
 Mother wrote in her garden journal, now open in 
 my lap, during the first year of her marriage, " David 
 has had a seat made under the sweet apple tree and 
 a walk running from it to the strawberry bed. I 
 shall plant my flowers on either side both for con 
 venience and to frame path and view as well. If 
 I may plant ten or fifteen feet every year, I shall be
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 101 
 
 content, for the garden should be a pleasure, not a 
 burden." ; \ ''*,' ^ '.: 
 
 Dear mother barely reached the strawberries* \& 
 those five years, but in spite of godmother's fifty 
 pounds I too must be careful about expansion; for, as 
 Evan says, it isn't the first outlay of strength or money 
 that will upset us, but the fixed charges, while father 
 jokingly adds that the cause of much physical and 
 all mental disease is " biting off more than one can 
 chew." How I shall have to set my teeth and quell 
 my garden appetite ! The garden will be so much 
 more lovable continued as it began. New things and 
 places are so terribly lonely. Fortunately, after all, 
 there is but one suitable spot hereabout for a garden, 
 and that is where it now is. 
 
 How blessed I am in having the responsibility and 
 temptation of choice removed from me ! I might 
 break loose and be ruined by visionary schemes. 
 Heredities may be horrible ghoulish things if they 
 are bad, but when good, surely nothing can equal 
 them. Imagine how terrifying it would be if we had 
 to decide the beginnings of things for ourselves : as 
 to what race we should belong, what sex, and all that, 
 instead of placidly coming out of unconsciousness to 
 find it all arranged ! Then suppose falling in love 
 and going away with one's husband were not a
 
 102 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 custom all over the world, how strange it would 
 be'!.' " V ? ? 
 
 'It is -growing dusky in among the rafters, but the 
 Garden of Dreams is every moment growing more 
 distinct to my waking vision. To-night Evan must 
 put it all down on paper for me, so that I shall 
 not forget or make mistakes. What is that noise ? 
 Really, I can imagine that I see strange shapes mov 
 ing among the rafters. The dogs are all alert. Ah ! 
 only the telephone bell in the hall. 
 
 Evan has just called me to say that he has 
 arranged to stay at home all day to-morrow! We 
 have agreed not to use the long-distance line 
 except for emergencies, such as his being unex 
 pectedly detained in town over night, for it is so 
 expensive. But he knew how I have been longing 
 to have him here for a week day, so that we might 
 realize everything again, and decide the garden 
 plan, and he would not keep me waiting to know 
 of it for even an hour. 
 
 It is quite dark now when he comes home, so we 
 carry a flash lantern when he takes his after-dinner 
 cigar walk, that we may neither run into trees nor 
 fall into the new violet frame while we tell of the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 103 
 
 day's work. Oh, the joy of the telling, when every 
 commonest detail means so much! 
 
 Really, I must be careful what I say, or rather 
 sing, in the presence of these dogs; for a moment 
 ago I gave vent to my feelings of joy in a bit of 
 a song that was between a cheer and a yodel, and 
 those two hounds first raised their heads and bayed 
 as if it was night, and the full moon shining in 
 their kennel, then dashed about the attic at full 
 cry. Next Lark took it up. Bluff tried to copy 
 until he choked, and Pat yelped. 
 
 Delia the waitress immediately appeared with a 
 white, scared face, out of breath from running up 
 stairs, saying that in the old country such keening 
 always meant death. 
 
 Hardly had she disappeared when Martha Corkle 
 the decorous, knocked, begged pardon, but the 
 sound of the hounds had given her such a turn 
 she'd nearly dropped the soup kettle, and it made 
 her feel more settled and at home than anything 
 since she came. From that moment Bugle and 
 Tally-ho never lacked food, but, on the other hand, 
 any dog mischief that was done in Delia's precinct 
 was laid to their charge.
 
 104 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 Tim is coming up the road with the great wagon 
 and two big boxes, one long and one square. What 
 can they be? The sundial, of course. Pedestal 
 and top. For though it left before we did, being 
 freight, it was delayed. 
 
 To-morrow Evan will be here, and we will have 
 a festival and set the dial; that is, if we can agree 
 upon the place, and it is good weather. Ah, there 
 is a red streak in the west, and it is widening. It 
 is almost train time. I will drive down for Evan 
 myself, and tell him that our talisman has come.
 
 VII 
 
 A BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST 
 
 November i. Why has no one written a November 
 rhapsody with plenty of lilt and swing ? The poets 
 who are moved at all by this month seem only 
 stirred to lamentation, giving us year end and 
 " melancholy days " remarks, thereby showing that 
 theory is stronger than observation among the rhym 
 ing brotherhood, or else that they have chronic indi 
 gestion and no gardens to stimulate them. 
 
 Of course I do not know what November might 
 mean to some one living away from his kind without 
 love, in a cheerless house, lacking adequate means of 
 heating or light, with no bath tub, and a well low 
 from summer droughts, the sort of being whose intel 
 ligence dries away in autumn like the leaves, and 
 whose breath of life merely flickers half dormant 
 until the spring sun forces it to quicken in spite of 
 itself. 
 
 The strange part of it is that so many city folk asso 
 ciate this state of woodchuck existence with the real 
 
 105
 
 106 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 country life, whereas the intelligent country life, if it 
 is lived and not merely toyed with in an amateurish 
 manner, is a full, sparkling, strenuous course, calling 
 for a more inventive brain and greater activity than 
 that of the city in proportion as its satisfaction is 
 greater. The difference is that in the city at best 
 one lives the life of others, the life of the shop, the 
 street, the crowd, while in the country one must live 
 one's own life. A selfish, warped, narrow life, some 
 say ? Doubtless it might he ; but if one has a home 
 to keep, a husband weaving his web daily to and fro, 
 and a country doctor, vibrating with sympathies of 
 many lives, for a father, the pulse can never beat 
 slow nor the heart grow cold. 
 
 I am daily realizing that it is a liberal education of 
 both heart and head simply to be Evan's wife and my 
 father's daughter. Father's private means, though 
 small comparatively, enable him to keep abreast of 
 outside affairs and the newest methods of his profes 
 sion, so that he can do the best possible for his 
 poorest patient, regardless of fees or criticism, thus 
 carrying comfort and hope miles beyond the usual 
 limited circuit when controlled by mere pay. 
 
 The saying that "shoemaker's children lack 
 shoes " is simply a criticism of the relations between 
 the children and their cobbler parent. The parental
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 107 
 
 attitude toward his trade evidently was not such as to 
 make it interesting in his children's eyes, otherwise 
 they would not only have thought shoes desirable, but 
 have learned to make them. 
 
 Father's attitude toward his profession has always 
 made it seem to me like the highest expression of 
 the religion of humanity. To do the highest duty 
 amid the scenes in which his life is set from lonely 
 farm to the hovels of factory and brick-yard workers 
 in the town, the healer of the body must also at need 
 become the soother and strengthener of the soul. 
 Was it not this revelation of spiritualized humanity 
 that the Master preached and practised when he 
 cleansed the lepers, bade Lazarus come forth, and 
 comforted the dying thief with the positive promise 
 of things beyond ? 
 
 I think also that a certain knowledge of the 
 processes of natural law, so that the facts of it come 
 to one unconsciously and as a matter of course, pre 
 vents many shocks and jars that would otherwise 
 meet a woman on entering the world that lies out 
 side of the protecting doors of home. While a 
 knowledge of the evil of breaking these laws as seen 
 by the results, even in one little hospital, must make 
 one's relations to the race more sane and sound. 
 
 Surely the country life is not as wholly com-
 
 io8 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 pounded of vegetation as the city dweller imagines. 
 The cockney who thinks that he has summed up 
 the essence of torpidity when he speaks of people 
 who "vegetate in the country," simply illustrates 
 his own ignorance and that he does not even know 
 the life history of a turnip. For, taking the term 
 literally, few things live more hurried and pushing 
 lives than vegetables. 
 
 Vegetables are chiefly articles upon which the 
 very life of the world depends ; they do a great 
 deal of work, and do it in private a method of 
 which most people have no conception, as not to 
 live in public is to them the equivalent of death. 
 Also to be a successful vegetable requires great 
 energy ; for not only must it work hard during the 
 growing season, keeping its health and digestion 
 in order often on scanty and variable rations, but 
 it must provide, either by seed or the storing up in 
 bulb, tuber, or rootstock, enough strength to insure 
 its further existence. 
 
 To return to November and its praise; mine is 
 conclusive, being both material and sentimental, 
 and stated in a few words. To-day has been one 
 of the happiest days of my life, and it is November
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 109 
 
 first. True, Aunt Lot surprised us by coming in by 
 the evening train, Reverend Jabez being now located 
 at Centreville, thirty miles off, to get some winter 
 flannels that she left packed away and offer me 
 advice as to household management. But she has 
 not damaged the day, for father has kindly lured 
 her into his study; she merely acted as a sort of 
 nightcap under whose influence, together with the 
 result of an entire day out of doors, Evan and I crept 
 somnolently into our den to sit in the big armchair 
 in front of the wood fire, and whisper about things 
 that could be perfectly well spoken aloud; but to 
 make people tiptoe and whisper is Aunt Lot's effect 
 upon every one. 
 
 " Why are we sitting here, instead of entertaining 
 your Aunt Lot?" Evan asked contentedly, without 
 making any effort to move. 
 
 "Because we are rude and perfectly frank heathens. 
 We don't care to see her, for she wasn't nice about 
 our being married, and so we do not pretend we do. 
 We do not care a bit because the roof of the parson 
 age pantry leaked and spoiled her season's jam and 
 jelly; we don't care that the 'four youngest' are badly 
 disciplined and a trial; instead, we feel very sorry 
 for them. 
 
 "Then she is sure to have speeches to make
 
 no THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 about my duty to you, quite forgetting that in her 
 wrath two years ago she summed you up as ' one of 
 those foreign adventurers.' Yet I suppose I must 
 go in," I said dubiously. 
 
 But I didn't go. Evan said it would be undutiful 
 to him. 
 
 I wonder if she and the Reverend Jabez ever sit 
 in the same chair in front of the fire ! Evan says 
 they probably have an oil stove, and of course no 
 one would care to sit by that ! 
 
 The day began for me at half past six o'clock. 
 Not that I got up then. I merely roused suffi 
 ciently to go over to the window-seat and see if 
 the weather promised well. 
 
 It has been an opalescent day. When I looked 
 out this morning, the opal was dull with barely a 
 flush ; everything was a mysterious pearly gray. 
 Season, location, time, equally veiled by the fog 
 that remained to tell of yesterday's downpour. One 
 thing, however, this fog surely indicated, that the 
 weather was still mild, as a cold northwest wind 
 would have swept the world dry, while the first 
 thing that the window revealed would have been 
 the top of the bare gray maples that bound us on
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE in 
 
 the lower side of the hill. The silence was com 
 plete, not even the plash of a drop of water or a 
 ripple in the sea of fog. Suddenly the sun, only 
 clear of the horizon, burned solidly through the 
 mist, a fire opal whose glints of green, scarlet, 
 yellow, and purple were caught by every leafless 
 twig and woven in a filmy tissue that covered the 
 grass. 
 
 All day yesterday a flock of despondent robins 
 took shelter in the honeysuckles of the porch and 
 in the hemlock hedge. The old birds were silent, 
 the young males, however, occasionally giving a 
 call or trying a few notes, as it were, to cheer them 
 selves; but it was a sad autumnal sound with a 
 sort of pibroch wail to it. 
 
 This morning however, they were all darting 
 about across the lawn, and one, close above the 
 window, confided to my ear quite four bars of an 
 advance spring song. 
 
 How we are all more or less creatures of Sun, 
 Shadow, and Imagination, impressed or depressed 
 by weather ! As the musical robin flew to join 
 his mates, I remembered that it was to be a holiday 
 with Evan at home, and the consequent agreement 
 to disagree between Exact Time and Breakfast, so 
 I curled up comfortably in bed again, not intend-
 
 H2 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 ing to doze, but merely realize the luxurious state 
 of things. This enjoyment of an occasional late 
 breakfast is one of the joys of the commuter and 
 his wife which is denied the blase beings who always 
 breakfast in winter at eight or nine. As for spring 
 and summer mornings, who but a cripple could lie 
 in bed ? 
 
 In spite of my intention I fell asleep, for the next 
 thing I remember, the tall clock down in the hall 
 whirred and struck eight times, accompanied by the 
 baying with which the hounds always answered its 
 warning when within earshot. Evan was missing, 
 while strange noises on the piazza at the back of the 
 house whetted my naturally rampant curiosity, and 
 made me dress in a very incoherent fashion and 
 hurry downstairs. 
 
 Where was Evan ? Father was at the breakfast 
 table. Delia fluttered about in a conscious way, and 
 as I entered the room, Evan dodged in at the opposite 
 side through a long window, looking quite guilty and 
 with marks of the soil on the knees of his knicker 
 bockers, his feet, and hands : the latter he hid in the 
 pockets of his coat. Then as I glanced at the table 
 almost covered with flowers, I realized that it was my 
 birthday, and that somebody had taken a long drive 
 to the greenhouse in town while I was still sleeping,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 113 
 
 and somebody else had a present that he was trying 
 to conceal. 
 
 " Which am I to sit by for these ? " I said, as I 
 turned from the flowers to the two men, who looked 
 expectant. 
 
 " Oh, I didn't go over on purpose, dear child," said 
 father, quite innocently, drawing me down for his 
 twenty-five kisses. " I often make my trip to the 
 hospital early to take them unawares. It is well, you 
 know, sometimes. Yes, to be sure, this is rather ear 
 lier than usual, but then, daughter, I wanted to have 
 a longer day with my children at home." 
 
 Meanwhile Delia brought in the coffee biggin and 
 lit the lamp (I make the coffee, Martha being too 
 thoroughly steeped in English tea making to compass 
 the mystery). Still Evan did not sit down, but fidg 
 eted about by the window. 
 
 Seeking the cause, I too looked out, and there on 
 the piazza was what at a glance seemed to be the 
 stock in trade of a nurseryman, all arranged sys 
 tematically. There were bags of bulbs, rows of 
 prickly though leafless roses with their roots tied in 
 balls of moss, topless herbaceous plants, only iden 
 tifiable by their labels ; a line of well-grown shrubs 
 leaned against the house, their roots, also, protected 
 with moss, while in the walk, quite safe and sound, 
 i
 
 114 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 reposed the sundial. Evan had not only unpacked 
 and sorted the modest supply of things I had 
 ordered, but supplemented them by those which he 
 knew we should need, and being slow of growth 
 ought to be planted without delay. 
 
 Father and Evan are never so handsome or happy 
 as when they have planned a surprise for me, and as 
 they are doing this almost every day, you can easily 
 judge of the personal appearance and temper of my 
 two lovers without further description. 
 
 In order to give each his due I pushed over three 
 chairs close together on one side of the table, and 
 sat in the middle one myself. 
 
 When the second part of the breakfast should have 
 appeared, a lull occurred, unnoticed at first, there was 
 so much to talk about. However, as we all wished 
 to go out, after a reasonable time I rang for Delia, 
 who had disappeared, and told her to serve the 
 steak. 
 
 She opened her mouth to speak, changed her 
 mind, and went into the pantry, where I heard 
 whispering. In a moment Martha Corkle appeared 
 in the doorway, her hands clasped over a faultless 
 white apron, her bosom heaving. 
 
 A shocked expression jarred her countenance as 
 she saw us all in a bunch on one side of the table
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 115 
 
 as if blown there by a storm. I must acknowledge 
 that we were not behaving in a conventional British 
 breakfast manner. Evan had stuck roses in my 
 hair, and I had put one in every buttonhole of his 
 velveteen coat, which he wore over a sweater, while 
 a single bud was tucked over father's nearest ear 
 a fact of which he was blissfully unconscious, as 
 he gave Martha the kindly and fraternal smile with 
 which he invariably greeted her over the top of his 
 paper, having refrained from handshaking since 
 the night of our arrival. 
 
 " The steak is gone, Mrs. Evan, stole and gone, 
 ma'am, by what ways it isn't for me to say. It 
 was as fine a cut as ever I've handled, leastwise in 
 this 'ouse. Two and a quarter in weight, without 
 the end that I always trims off for the soup stock, 
 Mrs. Evan. It was there when I cast my eye 
 through the ice-chest after last night's dinner; this 
 mornin' it was gone." , 
 
 " Could the dogs have helped themselves to it ? " 
 suggested Evan, chuckling at Martha's perturbation. 
 " You might have taken it out without thinking and 
 left it on the table, you know," he said to her. " I 
 remember once long ago that you rowed a lot 
 about my taking a cold fowl and a ham shank to 
 make a feast for some boating chaps, and my
 
 Ii6 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 mother reminded you that we ate them the day 
 before in a pie ! " 
 
 " Mr. Evan, a sober woman doesn't so mistake 
 herself twict. That was when I was but fresh 
 widowed and my prospects gone, and I well re 
 member how it turned me about. It was twenty 
 years " 
 
 " Yes, but now and the meat, that is the ques 
 tion. Cook us some eggs, and we'll track the steak 
 later." 
 
 " Mr. Evan, sir, I can't deal with eggs until I'm 
 cleared of that steak." Then, lowering her voice, 
 " I do think that terrier, Pat, is the likeliest to have 
 ate it, though Delia says it was those hinnercent 
 'ounds." Mrs. Corkle spoke with unusual correct 
 ness for one of her class, only lapsing when under 
 great excitement. 
 
 " Mrs. Evan, ma'am, in my 'umble opinion, 
 Pat is the only one of the dogs tricky enough to 
 make way with meat and dish besides," she added, 
 as a convincing argument. 
 
 "The dish!" I cried. "No dog would take the 
 dish." 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Evan, the dish is gone, a plate of one 
 of the old kitchen set, of whom there's but few left, 
 with a blue picture drawn out on it."
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 117 
 
 " Steak gone, plate, picture ? " queried father, sud 
 denly emerging from behind his paper and dropping 
 it, while a flush struggling with a half guilty, half 
 confused expression crossed his face. 
 
 "Well, Barbara, that is, you see the fact is 
 I took that steak last night, and forgot to replace it. 
 I've been visiting that poor Baker woman who is so 
 run down and has a cough. You know her, Barbara ; 
 she used to sew here sometimes but born a lady, 
 and with the sensitiveness of one. She needs meat. 
 Cheap slops and medicine won't build her up ; but 
 she is too poor to buy it, and it would offend her if I 
 offered her money or ordered meat direct from the 
 butcher. 
 
 " Last night as I was going out I looked in the ice- 
 chest for some little knick-knack that I could carry 
 her as a home product, you know quite a different 
 thing, I take it, from food purchased on purpose. 
 The steak was exactly the thing she needed, 
 would last her three days ; and that old blue plate she 
 was sure to recognize as ours, so I took them to 
 gether, and forgot to mention it or buy another steak. 
 You see, my dear, you understand ? " 
 
 Of course / did, of course Martha Corkle did not ; 
 but appreciating a man's property rights in his own 
 ice-chest and contents, she retreated, technically if
 
 ii8 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 not entirely satisfied, and sent us in irreproachable 
 poached eggs, and the dish of toasted bacon that to 
 gether with kidneys always makes us forget her 
 shortcomings in coffee, and the awful duck-on-a-rock 
 bread she perpetrates. This bread is of the consis 
 tency of clay, and is called a "cottage loaf." You 
 can't slice it ; the native whittles it up with his knife 
 as one does a pencil. At present we live on toast, 
 the basis supplied by an itinerant baker. Later, I 
 shall doubtless get up my courage to ask her to take 
 lessons of Mrs. Mullins, an old ex-cook. 
 
 The commuter's wife should have a hen rampant 
 as her coat of arms, and adopt it as her patron saint. 
 I swear daily gratitude to this commonplace and song- 
 less bird, for, given eggs, my household need not 
 go breakfastless either to town or to hospital. Both 
 father and Evan are not only satisfied but eager 
 for eggs at breakfast and other odd times. They 
 may be cooked in any of a dozen ways, or at a pinch 
 not cooked at all, but shaken up in a deft way with a 
 few other ingredients. If a man regards eggs seri 
 ously, there is no need for him to run to the train 
 breakfastless, leaving wife or maids in a state of ex 
 haustion, one having stayed awake half the night to 
 wake the other. A late unsavory breakfast is never 
 pardonable, for fruit needs no cooking, and good cof-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 119 
 
 fee, a cereal, hot toast, and eggs " a 1'infinity " can 
 be as well gathered together in half an hour as in 
 half a day. You see, a country doctor's daughter has a 
 good chance to learn the ways of ministering to the 
 physical needs of a man who must always be well fed, 
 though often not lengthily. 
 
 The bacon and eggs had scarcely disappeared and 
 father had begged a third cup of coffee in honour of 
 my birthday, when there was a vigorous scratching 
 at the back door. I had been wondering all the 
 time what had become of the dogs, who usually were 
 the first to take their places either under the table 
 or beside the chairs of their favourites. 
 
 I could hear Tim outside, admonishing them and 
 evidently trying to chide them into order, which was 
 instantly departed from the moment the door opened. 
 They entered like rockets with a flash of colour. 
 Lark, Pat, and the hounds ran to me with every 
 symptom of joy, Bluff alone crawling under the 
 table with an evident desire to hide. Each dog had 
 a red ribbon tied around his neck, from which hung 
 a large pasteboard heart, bearing a birthday greet 
 ing and a quotation, something of the penny valen 
 tine order, appropriate to, if somewhat derisive of, 
 gardening. 
 
 One by one, much to the relief of the dogs, I
 
 120 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 gathered in the trophies. Stringing them on my 
 arm as I used to the hoops of wonderful paper 
 flowers that were used as favours at the dancing 
 class cotillons that vexed my youthful spirits. I 
 called Bluff to yield his ribbon, but he would not 
 come out. 
 
 Father commanded him in an unmistakable voice, 
 and then he crawled grovelling to his feet, as if in 
 abject terror, the cardboard heart chewed to pulp, in 
 his effort to get rid of it. 
 
 " I believe he thinks the dangling thing some sort 
 of a punishment for an unknown crime," said 
 father. " Once when he was a year or two old, I 
 tied a quail about his neck to punish him for eating 
 some game he should have retrieved, and I believe 
 the old fellow remembers it Untie the ribbon, Bar 
 bara, and see what he will do." 
 
 The moment the bow was loosened, I tossed the 
 whole necklet across the room, out of sight. Bluff 
 sat up still trembling and looked about, then with 
 two joyful barks, gave me his usual caress, the 
 veriest scrap of a lick on the nose, and with self- 
 respect restored, began to coax for toast. 
 
 By this time the sun was shining bright and 
 strong above the maples, and the air blowing 
 through the door that the dogs had burst open was
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 121 
 
 full of unexpected softness. Father and Evan dis 
 appeared each to his lair, to return simultaneously 
 armed with pipe and tobacco pouch, which prom 
 ised me two outdoor companions. For these beloved 
 men instinctively avoid saturating the indoor air with 
 pipe smoke, knowing without a word from me that 
 a woman of sensitive organization has the nose of 
 a hunting-dog. 
 
 Then we three strolled down toward the long 
 walk to take the first step toward capturing the 
 Garden of Dreams, that I might live my life in it. 
 A song sparrow sang merrily, a bluebird purled 
 away from the Mother Tree, the soft bright air 
 bore the fragrance of Russian violets, and a bit of 
 the tangle was gay with the hardy pompon chrys 
 anthemums, tawny, red, yellow, pink, and white. 
 My heart beat joyously, for love held me by either 
 hand, and before me there was work to be done, and 
 work is life. Still it is the first day of November! 
 Fie upon you, melancholy autumn poets !
 
 VIII 
 
 SETTING THE SUNDIAL 
 
 November I (continued}. Last night I told Evan 
 my plan of turning the old strawberry bed into a bit 
 of formal garden, and he agreed that it would be a 
 natural resting place for the eye in its journey from 
 the seat under the apple tree down the walk and 
 across the fields. 
 
 He emended the somewhat crooked design that I 
 had traced on a slate found in the attic desk, and made 
 me a fascinating water-colour sketch in which the 
 strawberry bed appeared as a small level lawn in the 
 centre of which stood the sundial acting as the hub 
 to a large, wheel-shaped flower bed, or rather, group 
 of beds, as the wide spokes, each of a different but 
 harmonizing colour, were separated by narrow grass 
 walks. A similar walk circled the spokes and was 
 bounded in turn by a circular bed that might be 
 called the tire of the wheel, and divided the grass walk 
 into four in order that one might get to the centre 
 
 .122
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 123 
 
 without walking through the outer bed. Four grace 
 ful wing-shaped beds filled the corners of the grass 
 plot, which by actual measurement proved to be 
 forty feet square. This plateau was on three sides 
 enough higher than the surrounding ground to allow 
 an arbitrary grass slope of two feet, with a couple of 
 steps where the long walk joined it. 
 
 Without suggesting what plants should be used, 
 that is to be settled on some dreary day in midwinter 
 when the first seed catalogue appears, bringing its 
 tantalizing mirage of possibilities, Evan washed 
 in a colour scheme that he knew would satisfy my 
 rather savage taste, and make this formal bit a 
 blaze of light without the aid of a single "foliage 
 plant." For it is really astonishing how few colours 
 are inharmonious when they are profusely massed 
 and have green for a background. 
 
 One thing we decided about my Garden of the 
 Sun, as Evan calls this formal bit, because it stands 
 out in the open entirely without shelter. It is to 
 contain only the perishable summer flowers, really 
 flowers of the sun, and fit companions of the sun 
 dial. Gorgeous blossoms that come into being in 
 June after the hardy roses have vanished, and glow 
 and blaze until they fairly bloom themselves to death, 
 before the frost touches them.
 
 124 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Of these flowers some are annuals, and others 
 tender perennials or so-called florists' flowers that 
 it is always a mistake to mix with bulbs or hardy 
 perennials, for in the early season they are over 
 powered, and in their turn choke the hardier plants, 
 exhausting the goodness from the soil by their rank 
 growth. 
 
 As for the spring bulbs, I do not like them in 
 set beds, each of a kind, and arranged in stripes or 
 figures, any more than I do the formal beds of foli 
 age plants. Grown in this way, as soon as the bulbs 
 are out of bloom they must be replaced, or the space 
 will look ragged and unsightly. This does away 
 with the natural seasons of the garden. I think that 
 one of the greatest charms of nature to women is 
 that she is, like ourselves, a creature of moods, phases, 
 seasons, and not always equally radiant. 
 
 Her wild garden has its spring, summer, autumn, 
 and winter seasons, one waxing as another wanes. 
 I think the cultivated garden should follow the 
 wild plan, and while it must yield flowers in some 
 part during the whole growing season, it ought not 
 to be coerced and stuffed like pate geese and every 
 bed expected to be in full bloom at all times. 
 
 Besides, this Constant pulling up and replanting 
 entails labour not within the power of the com-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 125 
 
 muter's wife, who, if she is wise, plans as far as 
 possible for the permanent, so if she is obliged to 
 neglect her flowers for a time, garden baldness will 
 not result. 
 
 Evan says that if gardening is to be my relaxa 
 tion and a pleasure, I must pursue it, but be very 
 careful that it does not get the upper hand and pur 
 sue me, for he has seen this turning of tables not 
 only cause the downfall of many gardens, but of 
 country homes as well. 
 
 If, a few days ago, Cris had put the sand where he 
 was directed, I should have planted my bulbs in the 
 wrong place. During the delay Evan discovered 
 that the grassy stretch outside the study and win 
 dows of our den, where father tramps to and fro and 
 smokes when he is thinking, looked bare, and some 
 thing was needed to shield the foundation of the 
 house. 
 
 This is a dry and sheltered nook, and an ideal 
 location for bulbs, if they are planted well forward 
 of the path and drip-line of the eaves. Evan has 
 marked out two curving beds that follow the line of 
 the path that goes to the rear door, and I am mass 
 ing all my bulbs in them, daffodils, narcissus, hya-
 
 126 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 cinths, tall late tulips, the golden banded auratum, 
 pure white madonna (candidum\ and pink and crim 
 son spotted Japan lilies. I shall plant them in groups, 
 not rows, according to height rather than colour, so 
 that by scattering some portulacca seed in June, the 
 ground will be covered beneath the tall stalks of 
 the later flowers, and we shall have colour under 
 the windows from April until October. There are 
 no plants more healthy, sturdily brilliant in bloom, 
 and unlikely to disappoint than the bulb tribe. 
 
 These are the only two flower beds to be allowed 
 out of strict garden limits, as we have decided that 
 all the other decorations grouped about the house 
 must be tufts of eulalia, various shrubs, and groups of 
 scillas, daffodils, peonies, and iris set in the grass. 
 The older shrubs we have in plenty, great masses of 
 lilacs, syringas, and snowballs filling every corner 
 and overarching the walk. 
 
 Our ancestors were aided by their usual common 
 sense regarding economy of labour, when they gath 
 ered their little home gardens in a corner, often fenc 
 ing them in from the rest of the land. Here the 
 flowers could be considered as a whole, be loved, 
 tended, watered, and protected from insect enemies 
 without waste of energy. 
 
 Upon this same principle I must collect my flower
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 127 
 
 family under one roof, so to speak, keeping them in 
 such order that I may not only enjoy them freely, 
 but minister easily to their needs quite out of the 
 range of highway criticism. Not that I object to 
 being seen weeding, watering, tying, and insectiding 
 in a perspiring and collarless condition, but I do not 
 wish to be pounced upon by every patient that calls 
 and be expected to take them into my sanctuary, 
 there to prowl and despoil me of garden privacy or 
 flowers after the custom of the idly curious. It is 
 something of a responsibility of course to be one's 
 own gardener, but an infinite satisfaction withal to 
 feel that the making and even the marring is within 
 one's own grasp. That is, as far as things agricultu 
 ral are ever within the power of a mere human. For 
 as a humbling and God-fearing occupation, none can 
 exceed the gardener's. Mother Earth has ways of 
 trying and proving the temper or lack of it that can 
 not be surpassed for variety. 
 
 As I look back over the years that I have watched 
 garden processes, and sown and gathered my little 
 crop of flowers, it seems that I should now know 
 enough to keep clear of cultural sins both of omis 
 sion and commission. Yet when I realize all the 
 things that are uncontrollable, I turn pagan and am 
 inclined to make a series of shrubby grottos to har-
 
 128 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 hour the deities of Sun, Rain, and Seasonable 
 Weather, so that I may secretly propitiate them with 
 offerings. It was a woman gardener who said feel 
 ingly, " Paul may plant, but if Apollos declines to 
 water, what can one do about it?" 
 
 In these days, however, all well-conducted dwell 
 ers in the country have artesian wells and wind 
 mills, and are thereby able, up to a certain point, by 
 means of a diamond spray sprinkler, to sneeze in 
 the face of so important a person as even Apollos 
 himself. 
 
 Of course we have one of these wells, both for 
 outdoor convenience and because father has been 
 trying for many years to convince the community 
 that neighbourliness does not require them to drink 
 each other's drainage. This they do inevitably on 
 the village and river side of the hills, where wells 
 and cesspools alternate with great regularity. Surely 
 the country life is the healthiest in the world, other 
 wise the rank and file of people who live it would 
 never survive the liberties they take with them 
 selves ! 
 
 This morning when father, Evan, and I, fol 
 lowed by Tim and Bertie, arrived at the garden a
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 129 
 
 further surprise was ambushed behind the rose 
 arbour, in the shape of two men from the florist over 
 in town of whom father had bought my birthday 
 flowers. 
 
 "You see, Barbara," said Evan, shaking hands 
 with himself behind his back, a manner he has of 
 expressing satisfaction, " people always call in extra 
 help at a ' house-raisin',' so I thought that I would 
 do the same at this ' garden digging ' ; for if your 
 beds are shaped now, you can in your mind's eye 
 plant and replant, until when spring comes every 
 thing will be decided to your satisfaction." 
 
 I laughed aloud and clapped my hands at this new 
 outbreak of one of Evan's strong traits ; for the dear 
 fellow had only a few moments before warned me 
 that I could expect to do very little until spring, at 
 the very time that he was providing men with stakes, 
 measures, and lines to lay out the garden without 
 delay. 
 
 Making a noise when I am pleased is another of 
 my savage traits. Animals do it ; the dogs bay with 
 pleasure when invited for an unexpected walk. 
 When good luck came to Toomai of the Elephants, 
 he sat out in the night and thumped a tom-tom in 
 pure joy. Civilization is mostly silent in happiness, 
 feeling doubtless that at least feigned indifference
 
 130 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 is expected of it. I often wonder whether we gain 
 or lose by being civilized. It is so much less com 
 plicated to be a savage. 
 
 The next consideration was the location of the 
 sundial, for a hole must be dug and a rough founda 
 tion of stones, rubble, and cement laid before it could 
 be set. 
 
 Fortunately the strawberry bed had been care 
 fully levelled in its youth ; the ashes used as a top 
 dressing, drawing white clover to fill the place of the 
 departed berries, promised very respectable turf, 
 that by a careful weeding out in spring and raking 
 in of fresh seed would serve quite well. After Evan 
 had driven the central stake Bertie set to work with 
 his shovel, advised and admonished by Tim, whose 
 dialect Scotch must have seemed a weird language 
 to his Danish ears. 
 
 Meanwhile Evan and I strolled up and down the 
 long walk rather perplexed how to proceed, while 
 father surrounded by dogs watched us from his 
 seat under the tree, and the two extras stood at 
 " rest arms." 
 
 The borders, about six feet in width, were a hope 
 less jungle of hardy plants interspersed at intervals
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 131 
 
 with shrubs and tall bushes of the older roses such 
 as Magna Charta and Jacqueminot. Some of these 
 met over the path and partly barred the way. At 
 this season of course the hardy plants could be dis 
 tinguished only by their leaves, and being herba 
 ceous, any night a hard frost might destroy even 
 this clue. 
 
 There was a broad band of hollyhocks too well 
 placed against the honeysuckle bank to be dis 
 turbed, straggling helter-skelter were foxgloves, 
 Canterbury bells, larkspurs, phloxes, sweet William, 
 columbines, white anemone Japonica still in bloom 
 in company with monkshood, hardy coreopsis, even 
 ing primroses, honesty, and sunflowers, while the 
 autumnal growth of white, yellow, and red day 
 and tiger lilies and scarlet oriental poppies was 
 distinguishable. 
 
 After several turns up and down in a brown 
 study, Evan threw back his head and cried : "I 
 have it ! I will have the men grub up all these 
 plants with the exception of the roses and shrubs 
 and put them on the walk, work over the beds 
 thoroughly, and dig in good old manure from that 
 heap in the field. Then the plants can be reset 
 neither in a jungle nor in stiff lines, but in groups 
 of a kind between the shrubs, which really, when
 
 132 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 properly trimmed, will make a series of alcoves to 
 break the awkwardness of straight lines. Some 
 shrubs are too old and must come out or be re 
 placed, and others, like the great syringas, lilacs, 
 and snowballs, can be allowed to meet over the 
 walk and may be cut out to form natural arches. 
 This I will manage myself. What do you think of 
 my scheme, Madam Commuter ? Doesn't it keep 
 the old and yet put it in a tangible, workable shape 
 without breaking any of the canons and laws of 
 my craft ? " 
 
 I said that it was charming and suited me exactly, 
 but did not add that it was precisely what I myself 
 had planned yesterday in the attic and sketched on 
 the reverse side of the old slate. It is a great mis 
 take to collapse the lovable little self-conceits of 
 men, for they are of a wholly different quality from 
 egotism. Besides, to have told Evan that his plan 
 was " piper's news " or that " great minds think 
 alike" would have deprived him of the pleasure of 
 pleasing me. Poor Aunt Lot had this fatal quality 
 of forestalling surprises and caused me to lock up 
 the characteristic for future avoidance in my brain 
 cabinet. 
 
 Then Evan called the men, and the digging and 
 sorting began. It will take them at least a whole
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 133 
 
 week to restore these hardy beds to order, but 
 luckily the " extras " are a birthday gift and do not 
 have to be recorded and extracted, or I should say 
 subtracted, from godmother's fifty pounds. Though 
 really I suppose I should credit the garden account 
 with them, all the same, if we are to keep track of 
 what it costs. But why keep a garden account and 
 reckon the cost of pure joy ? Is it not cheap at 
 any price ? 
 
 But, on the other hand, if I do not keep the real 
 izing sense of cost before me, I may be tempted 
 some day to write a delusive book upon how to 
 run a country home, horse and cow inclusive, on 
 ten dollars a week, supply a family of ten with 
 vegetables grown in a city plot, or give minute in 
 structions as to the way a cripple may support him 
 self by raising roses for market from cuttings 
 obtained from withered bouquets, in a greenhouse 
 glazed with castaway photograph plates and heated 
 by a kerosene lamp ! 
 
 I may not be wholly sane in my regard for 
 money. In childhood a dollar did not mean a 
 hundred cents, but twenty packets of flower-seeds ; 
 ten cents, a clump of pansies, a verbena, or a small 
 geranium ; while twenty-five cents stood for a helio 
 trope, a Fuchsia, or a tea-rose in forced and conse-
 
 134 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 quently hectic bloom. Even now money never 
 seems an actuality unless reckoned by its products, 
 merely being according to its volume, so much 
 food, so many plants, dogs, books, or a coveted bit 
 of land or a horse, consequently a commodity not 
 to be hoarded but to be immediately sent out to 
 fulfil its destiny. For as long as you keep money 
 it yields nothing but worry, the current rate of 
 interest being simply beneath contempt. On the 
 other hand, you buy dogs and you buy food ; one 
 eats the other, there is no waste, while satisfac 
 tion and good company is the result. Also you 
 buy seeds and manure; the seeds eat the manure, 
 and flowers are the results. Is not this true 
 economy ? 
 
 Evan shakes his head at my theories, and yet 
 when I corner him, he confesses that he has some 
 what the same feeling and that the ideal condition 
 to him would be to work for pure love of it, never 
 thinking of money, but simply by putting the hand 
 in the pocket always finding the sum necessary to 
 pay for the article purchased. 
 
 This morning as we walked to and fro, hatless and 
 absorbing the wonderfully balmy air that father said
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 135 
 
 was a reprieve granted to autumn by summer in 
 honour of my birthday, we crossed the open square 
 and followed the line of the cart track down the 
 field among the trees, until it wound in and out like a 
 cowpath. 
 
 " We might," I suggested, " use this cart track 
 as a walk through this short stretch of smooth 
 ground and end it where the bushes and trees begin, 
 continuing the beds of hardy flowers beside it 
 Some day perhaps we will have this old wood lot 
 ploughed up and cultivated." 
 
 " Cultivated ? No," said Evan, as if an inspira 
 tion had seized him, pointing over the half-dozen 
 acres where the children of the ancient wood in the 
 shape of second growth hemlock, maples, a few 
 beeches and red oaks mingled with dogwood, cornel, 
 bayberry, sweet fern, and hazel bushes, and the 
 dry yellow fronds of the cinnamon and bleached 
 hay-scented ferns grew amid a maze of seeded 
 asters and goldenrods that still showed here and 
 there a fresh spray of yellow. " No, this shall be 
 your wild garden. A strip of a made path here 
 until it curves under those hemlocks, then merely 
 a grass trail of a lawn mower's width running where 
 you will, and to be varied according to mood, until 
 it reaches the bars where we will have a bench and
 
 136 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 stile. Ferns there are already in plenty, and we 
 can bring fresh roots home from every back-country 
 trip we take. The wild things will never mope and 
 starve in these surroundings ; so we need not cul 
 tivate, but merely adjust ourselves to the land." 
 
 " Yes, and the spring hole with the mossy cask 
 around it, where the cows used to drink down by 
 the bars, we might use for a lily pool and have Japan 
 iris and native water plants in the surrounding 
 muddy ground. Oh, Evan, you angel, for a long 
 time I've suspected you of having nice, strong, prac 
 tical, magic wings folded away under your coat. 
 This thought opens possibilities not even shadowed 
 in my Garden of Dreams." 
 
 " It is for this and the wherewithal to make your 
 dreams come true that I am here instead of in that 
 older garden overseas. No, don't look distressed, 
 sweetheart; for after all, a man's wife is his home 
 and kindred." 
 
 Then father came up, wondering what we were 
 discovering either in each other or in what, to 
 unilluminated eyes, seemed only a ragged wood lot, 
 brown with November's smoke tints. 
 
 When we had explained that the Garden of 
 Dreams was to begin at the "Mother Tree" and 
 end quite out of sight in a maze of wilderness, his
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 137 
 
 face was strangely lighted, and putting an arm 
 around my waist and Evan's shoulder, he drew us 
 together, saying, " Children, your lives, I believe, 
 will be a long walk through the garden of your 
 affections, and your old father thanks God that he 
 is allowed to walk even a small part of it with 
 you." 
 
 The hardy roses and shrubs that Evan had 
 bought also as a birthday gift to supplement those 
 we already had, have been banked up in the vege 
 table garden until the borders are rearranged. Of 
 course we take a risk in planting things so late. 
 October is a better time ; but if we have a close 
 snowy winter, there is little danger, and we shall 
 put straw jackets on the roses until they are estab 
 lished. On the other hand, if one waits to plant 
 hardy things until spring, the ground may be late 
 in thawing, and a whole season's bloom lost. 
 
 How delightfully the damp earth around the 
 plant roots smelled when Evan unpacked them this 
 morning. I think I must have a tinge of poor 
 Peter Schmidt's love of the soil, irrespective of 
 what it produces, in my nature, for the various 
 earth odours all have a separate tale to tell, and
 
 138 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 the leaf mould of the woods bears a wholly different 
 fragrance from that of the soil under pasture turf, 
 or the breath that the garden gives off in great 
 sighs of relief when it is relaxed and refreshed by 
 a summer shower. 
 
 This happy birthday has held two sensations not 
 in the planning and planting scheme. When we 
 were sorting the bulbs, the hounds carried off the 
 bag of snowdrops, and after worrying it, ate a por 
 tion of its contents. Without looking in either 
 Dodoens's or Gerarde's " Herbal " for the medicinal 
 properties of snowdrops, I now know that they 
 give puppies severe colic. Fortunately Bugle and 
 Tally-ho did not eat many, and Evan secured the 
 rest and has bedded them in a spot unknown to 
 me, so that some early spring day I may go out 
 and be surprised by finding them. 
 
 I also have planted a surprise for Evan in the 
 grass bank at the foot of the honeysuckle tangle, 
 a spot where the sun lies warmest in March, haJf 
 a dozen tufts of yellow primroses and cowslips taken 
 from the Somerset garden and smuggled home in 
 a box of moss deep in a trunk cover. If they thrive, 
 he shall have a bank of them in time, for I saved 
 plenty of seed. 
 
 The second happening was more serious. The
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 139 
 
 sundial was to be placed early in the afternoon with 
 some little bits of sentiment, by way of dedication. 
 The foundation was completed, and the shaft, a sim 
 ple, rather graceful vase-shaped column, set in posi 
 tion. Martha came out, and looked solemnly on at 
 a respectful distance, taking no notice of the some 
 what crookedly admiring glances of Tim ; for Martha 
 is not unattractive, having good hair and a portly 
 freshness not seen among our farming women of 
 fifty or thereabouts. 
 
 Father and Evan were busy with compass and 
 level; but though the sun shone brightly, the 
 shadow cast by the quaintly wrought brass finger 
 would not fall in the right place. Alack! the diffi 
 culty could not be adjusted; for owing to differences 
 in latitude, an English-born sundial cannot tell 
 New England time. 
 
 Father laughed mischievously as he rallied Evan 
 upon the inadaptability of the race to which he was 
 the exception that merely went to prove the rule. 
 Evan did not laugh, but as he glanced at me, we 
 mutually recognized each other's right of birth, and 
 the dial will stand as a safeguard to remind us to 
 respect each other's patriotism. 
 
 Meanwhile, Martha Corkle gave a suspicious sniff, 
 and remarked, "CrosshY seas don't change the
 
 140 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 'cart," while Tim forgot himself and indiscreetly 
 clapped her on the back, saying apologetically, 
 "Who'd ken the puir dumb stane 'ud be sa obsti 
 nate?" a proceeding she resented by stalking into 
 the house. 
 
 However, the dial is set, and will add a meaning 
 to the garden of the sun that shall surround it. 
 Mother, who went away in the long ago, I'm so 
 happy to-night, that I am sure you are very near. 
 I seem to feel your arms, and I know that you also 
 understand.
 
 IX 
 
 CHIEFLY DOMESTIC 
 
 November 8. This has been a week of rush, 
 wherein shovels, men, shrubs, shears, garden lines, 
 and mysterious calculations have whirled before my 
 eyes. In spite of our determination to thin out 
 and readjust the old stock of shrubs and hardy 
 plants, only one of the long borders is completed, 
 the other being, after two years of comparative 
 neglect, such a tangle of indistinguishable roots 
 that we are leaving it as an experiment, thinking 
 that it may give us some new hybrids of old 
 flowers, or at least yield some startling groupings 
 and combinations of colour that will outvie mere 
 neatness. 
 
 Every day I grow more and more grateful for 
 the things that have been. If mother had not 
 cared for gardening, I might have spent restless 
 years in groping before I knew that I wanted a 
 garden, cramping my mind and body in a city 
 apartment, or else stifling equally in some newly 
 made suburb. Treeless made-country is, I think, 
 
 141
 
 142 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 eveh more arid and monotonous than the city 
 streets. I simply shudder at the awfulness of 
 new places, where a level onion field perhaps, hav 
 ing survived its usefulness and sunk into weedy 
 slumber, awakes with a start so find a trolley whiz 
 zing down the highway to the market town. 
 Straightway it is dissected, and offered in building 
 plots of the "Why pay rent? Build your home 
 on easy terms" order. 
 
 One can readily tell what these hot little gardens 
 will be ; for even though the witch's cauldron period 
 has passed, there are other stock floral ornaments 
 for small lawns, the coleus anchor and the weeping 
 purple beech, a small tree that owes its lachrymose 
 appearance to having branches grafted on upside 
 down, so that eventually they grovel in the dirt. 
 The strange thing is that on a nearby cross-road 
 an acre or two of virgin soil with a dozen good 
 trees may often be had at the same price as the 
 arid lot. 
 
 " But," says some willing though gardenless 
 woman, "my parents did not have a garden for 
 me to inherit. Am I therefore to be shut out of 
 Eden? What am I to do?" 
 
 Do ? Buy the ground on the cross-road with 
 the trees, and make a garden with all possible
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 143 
 
 speed, that your children may be born with the 
 love of outdoors in them. 
 
 At present there is a lull in our garden opera 
 tions, and the soothing haze of burning leaves 
 hides the bare outlines of the new beds around 
 the sundial. The violet plants that are to yield 
 Evan's buttonhole flowers all winter are comfort 
 ably settled in the frames in the sunny corner 
 between stable and bank. An ordinary frame, 
 with three sashes, such as we use for seeds in 
 spring, will hold a hundred violet plants, and these, 
 if carefully protected by mats from freezing, and 
 well sunned to encourage bloom and keep out 
 mould, will furnish my commuter with his daily 
 flower until the out-door violets come in bloom, 
 besides giving his wife many a handful of fra 
 grance to put in the iridescent glass vase that 
 stands on her desk-top for the harbouring of lov 
 able flowers. 
 
 We bought the violet plants this year, but next 
 season we shall grow our stock. The lilies-of-the- 
 valley have spread wonderfully in my absence, and 
 must have a thorough weeding and be thinned by 
 having six-inch trenches cut through them before 
 they are bedded with manure for the winter. We 
 have always had glorious lilies because, in the face
 
 144 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 of gardeners and tradition, mother planted them in 
 sunny, rich soil instead of letting them starve and 
 dwindle in the shade. They grow south from the 
 apple tree thickly as the grass, their only limit being 
 the amount of room we can give them. 
 
 Evan made a discovery early this morning when 
 the dull red light of the sun, falling between the 
 bare interlaced branches, drew traceries on the win 
 dows, and shot long rays of the gorgeous shifting 
 hues of stained glass upon the floor, for the mo 
 ment turning the plain frames into a latticed case 
 ment. He saw that such was the slope of the land 
 that by cutting an opening through the thick maple 
 branches, the garden would lie before us like a 
 picture framed in leaves. 
 
 Then a second idea, born of the tree shadows, is 
 a plan to replace the windows of the square shallow 
 bay with latticed casements, and under them a 
 low, broad window seat, from which we may enjoy 
 the garden from afar. 
 
 The morning after my birthday the inevitable 
 conversation with Aunt Lot took place. Conver 
 sation ? No, Interview is the word, an Interview 
 conducted on the parish visitor (inquisitor) lines.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 145 
 
 She was evidently aggrieved because father had 
 not confided to her the precise date of our home 
 coming. She wished to have been present to wel 
 come us, after having vigorously upset the house 
 from garret to cellar in the historic name of house- 
 cleaning; and this topic furnished the opening text 
 for the discourse. 
 
 "I'm sorry, very sorry, Barbara, that the fall 
 cleaning was not done before you came, and with 
 your father here alone for almost two months, every 
 thing must be in a shocking condition. When do 
 you begin ? I suppose you intend to have it over 
 before Thanksgiving ? " 
 
 " I'm not going to begin, Aunt Lot." 
 
 "Are you putting it off until spring? I think 
 that's a risk." 
 
 " No, forever. Every room has its day for weekly 
 cleaning, and there will be no need for an up 
 set, as if we were fumigating after a contagious 
 disease." 
 
 " Humph ! and be sweeping and dusting all the 
 time ! You'll never manage it in the world, but I 
 suppose that is one of your new English ideas." 
 
 " No, simply common sense, like taking a bath 
 every morning, though I believe that there may still 
 be people who prefer to save up and take a semi- 
 L
 
 146 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 annual soak in pearline, the execution of which 
 makes them weak for several days afterward." 
 
 At this she shifted the subject. 
 
 " I must say, Barbara, that I was surprised to 
 hear that you were coming home to live. You 
 know I've always held the opinion that there was 
 no house large enough for two families. My 
 brother, though easy-going in general, is most 
 set in some things, and from what I have seen of 
 your husband, I should say that he was not only 
 set, but high spirited." 
 
 She had endeavoured to cross swords with Evan 
 at the time of our marriage and had never forgiven 
 him for declining to argue. 
 
 " Two families in one house ? Surely, Aunt Lot, 
 you do not practise what you preach ; for you have 
 gone into a house with another family, and a large 
 one at that. This, however, is really one household, 
 a big house, the dearest father in the world, with 
 a son and daughter to keep him young." 
 
 " Then, too," she continued, as if she had not 
 heard, " you are beginning most extravagantly, 
 three women in the house and two men outside. In 
 the old times I only had one woman, until your 
 father got the notion of having the office door waited 
 upon, and making patients send in their names
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 147 
 
 and come in turn, instead of leaving the door on 
 the latch for people to walk in sociably when 
 they pleased. No doubt, as he said, people did 
 sometimes go and wait round just out of curiosity 
 to see who was there, and somehow Miss Bache 
 found that Mrs. Dennison had liver trouble that 
 spotted her complexion, and mentioned it in sew 
 ing society, and her own husband's sister, not 
 knowing she was ailing, felt grieved to hear it 
 from a stranger. 
 
 " But I suppose you still expect to run wild as 
 you did when a girl, never going in the kitchen 
 except when you wanted something, and spending 
 all your time either grubbing in the dirt or reading 
 books that were not at all the thing for young 
 women, I never wasted my time in such idling, 
 or else listening to some impostor's tale over at 
 the hospital, or crying over the funerals of ragged 
 children that were much better dead. I hold three 
 women sheer extravagance, and it's a woman's duty 
 to surprise the kitchen at odd hours; otherwise 
 how find things amiss ? " 
 
 "Not extravagance, Aunt Lot, cooperation, the 
 only way in which twice two make five, and some 
 times even six or seven; and as to finding things 
 amiss, father always said we find what we look
 
 148 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 for ; consequently, as I don't wish to find things 
 amiss, I shall never look for trouble. If we had 
 taken a little place of our own with a horse, cow, 
 and garden, we should have had to keep a maid 
 and a man, should we not ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "And father must still have kept two maids and 
 a man ? " 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 " Then where is the extravagance of three women 
 and two men when we live together ? " 
 
 "That's not the way to look at it. When two 
 families live in one house, it is that they may get 
 on with less, else why do it ? " she added trium 
 phantly. 
 
 Poor Aunt Lot! she has always made of life a 
 sort of combination bargain sale, a debit and credit 
 account, with material loss and gain her only stand 
 ard, at least until she married the Methodist min 
 ister; and then I verily believe the gain that tempted 
 her was holding domestic authority over the mother 
 less eight. 
 
 " I think you are mistaken," I said, swallowing my 
 wrath ; " that is the sort of family combination that 
 fails and brings discredit upon the word. Coopera 
 tion is the having more of everything" (I was going
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 149 
 
 to say " love," but I cannot speak that word before 
 Aunt Lot), " home life, leisure, books, and all the 
 material things to boot." I was hastening to explain 
 also that Martha Corkle was an accident, a sort of 
 after-thought in our plans, but before I could speak, 
 Aunt Lot was again on the trail. 
 
 " The most objectionable feature about the house 
 is that woman you've imported. She is a most offen 
 sive person. Last night when I went into the kitchen 
 to chat with Delia and Eliza and ask them how they 
 were satisfied with the change of things, by the 
 way, I think Eliza is greatly wounded and depressed 
 at being set down from the cook's place after having 
 done the marketing when your father was alone, to 
 doing laundry and mere shift work and having no 
 say so, and then, too, Delia appears as if she'd been 
 crying, and wouldn't talk about her wedding, which I 
 don't think looks well, that woman, Martha Cock- 
 spur, stood all the time I was there and glowered at 
 me as if I had intruded and had no right to go to the 
 kitchen and speak to the help." 
 
 " Martha Corkle comes from a class of society 
 where the servants stand when the mistress visits the 
 kitchen, which she never does to discuss the members 
 of her family," I said emphatically. " She was quite 
 right ; you forgot yourself, and you were intruding.
 
 150 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 And now, if you please, we will talk of something 
 else." 
 
 "I meant no offence, Barbara, I'm sure. I only 
 thought it fair to warn you," she persisted. "You 
 are young and impulsive and have no experience. 
 You never had any responsibility before in your life, 
 and now what you'll do for jellies, preserves, and 
 canned things this winter I can't imagine. There is 
 a very worthy woman in our town who puts up such 
 things for sale. I might order some for you if you 
 like. I suppose you'll be putting in a great many 
 improvements, a hardwood floor in the best parlour, 
 perhaps, to set off those new rugs and heavy plush 
 curtains. You must have had a good many wedding 
 presents I've never seen." 
 
 " Thank you, but I do not need preserves and such 
 things. We all prefer fresh fruit and vegetables; 
 out of the growing season something can always be 
 bought at the market in town. I do not see why I 
 should make any change except little by little to 
 renew worn-out things; for father, as you see, has 
 had a lovely rosy paper put in this room and given 
 me all the dear old mahogany that was mother's. 
 New brass beds ? No ; I detest them. I like the 
 feeling of being surrounded and having my toes 
 tucked in instead of poking them between the bars 
 as a canary does his beak.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 151 
 
 "As to hardwood floors, father has them under 
 ban, for in a year he has traced two compound leg 
 fractures, a broken arm, collar bone, and an obsti 
 nate case of water on the knee, to polished floors. 
 Besides, very soon there won't be any best parlour. 
 It's to be our den, with plants and only the lightest 
 of frilly muslins at the windows and fresh matting 
 under the rugs. In fact, I'm going to banish all 
 carpets as soon as possible and have thickly lined 
 matting and rugs everywhere." 
 
 " It's plain that you are set in your ways already, 
 and don't wish my advice or value it," said Aunt 
 Lot finally, rising bonnet in hand as if to go, quite 
 in a huff, " but one thing more I must free my mind 
 of. You'll find your husband will get many a hard 
 cold coming up in those hot cars on stormy winter 
 nights, besides losing business by never meeting 
 people in the evening." 
 
 " Evan belongs to a club where he has a room 
 that he can use when weather or necessity requires," 
 I answered, boiling so internally that I am afraid 
 my voice shook. 
 
 " Humph ! I shouldn't have expected that he 
 would have laid plans to deliberately stay away 
 from you so soon." 
 
 "Stop, Aunt Lot! The plan was father's, and
 
 152 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Evan only consented to it because I urged it. No 
 woman should try to live the country life if she is 
 hysterical and makes her husband a train-slave. 
 Now, if you please, this talk must stop, and never 
 be renewed. I hear Tim bringing round the horse." 
 
 As I went to help her with her bag and the 
 packages containing her various belongings, I saw 
 that she hung back and evidently had something 
 further on her mind. To bring the really painful 
 visit to an end, I asked if I could do anything for 
 her. She hesitated, and then whispered, 
 
 " Would you show me your new clothes ? I've a 
 great deal to fix over. I didn't buy a trousseau, as 
 your Uncle Jabez was changing his charge at the 
 time of our wedding. Have you anything tasteful 
 in hats ? Being at the head of a parish, and going 
 to teas, cake-sales, funerals, and experience meet 
 ings, I'm called upon for quite a change." 
 
 The relief was almost too sudden. At last a 
 subject that could not breed strife ! I showed her 
 my modest store, a London tailor suit, some dainty 
 waists, an outing gown, an evening dress, a fur 
 jacket, and the hats. Hats have always been one 
 of my weaknesses. You can express so much in 
 a hat ; it often calls for flowers, and it requires very 
 few stitches. Other sewing seems such a waste
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 153 
 
 of time, the cutting of good cloth into more or less 
 fantastic shapes, and then pricking it full of holes 
 with a needle. 
 
 Poor soul ! how longingly she handled the head 
 gear, picked and puffed out the bows and flowers, 
 and laid each down with a sigh, lingering over a 
 girl's soft Alpine felt whose only decoration was a 
 band and buckle. Aunt Lot is rather pretty out 
 side, but in a faded sort of way, as if the fire of her 
 constant and, as she thinks, righteous, indignation 
 had had its searing effect. 
 
 She hung over one puffy little toque of mouse-gray 
 velvet with a big pink rose set squarely in front, 
 murmuring her desire to try it on, as, if it became 
 her, I might let her copy it, of course in cheaper 
 material ! An inspiration ! I immediately offered to 
 give the thing to her, promising to add strings to make 
 it bonnet-like, and to veil the brightness of the rose 
 with black tulle, all the work of a few minutes. 
 
 She accepted the gift with alacrity that bore a 
 resemblance to pleasure, but resented the strings 
 as too heating, also the hiding of the rose, saying 
 that Jabez liked pink. 
 
 How strange it is that the only effort of so many 
 well-meaning women to keep young is by dressing 
 in the way that most accentuates their wrinkles, con-
 
 154 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 cealing the gray locks that soften the face, by either 
 covering the forehead with a sort of scrambled egg 
 arrangement of brown curls or mounting the horror 
 of a fat artificial pompadour ! 
 
 The doorstep was reached at last, and the packages 
 stowed in the rockaway ; I breathed more freely, but 
 no, there was a last word, and it was not mine. 
 With her foot on the step, Aunt Lot turned to 
 say, 
 
 " Now, Barbara, when Delia marries at Christmas, 
 you'll doubtless have difficulty in getting a waitress. 
 This commuting business, with early breakfast and 
 late dinner, and the dishes to wash up at goodness 
 knows what hours, isn't popular, and you'll have 
 trouble. But if you'll let me, I can get you a good 
 young woman from our town. She is not very 
 strong and she has never lived out, so she wouldn't 
 expect high wages, and I might keep her a few weeks 
 without pay to help me out and counsel and train 
 her for you." 
 
 At this juncture from some cause known only to 
 Tim, the horse grew restive, and I had just sufficient 
 self-control left to cross the piazza., enter the house, 
 and close the door without banging it; then I flew 
 up to the attic, followed by Bluff, who had been in 
 hiding behind of the study sofa, as he had never
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 155 
 
 forgiven Aunt Lot for once beating him with her 
 parasol, his only whipping as far as I knew, when 
 he had given her a too affectionate greeting on her 
 return from making state calls. 
 
 Once in my retreat, I closed the door and lay on 
 the old lounge panting; I remained there, saying 
 things for quite a time, and finally recovered enough 
 to take my outlook seat at the dormer window. 
 
 Oh, the soothing whisper of outdoors even when 
 the voice comes from leafless trees having a clearer, 
 more incisive tone than that of dense leafage, and 
 the pines and spruces come forward and keep up a 
 full accompaniment like the lapping of waves that 
 is unheard at an earlier season. 
 
 As I looked out I realized a feature that I had 
 never before noticed. The evergreens, so old that 
 they had lost all Christmas-tree stiffness and taken 
 easy attitudes, had been so planted that as the elms 
 and maples lost their leaves, they seemed to dis 
 appear into the draperies of these sturdy trees, and 
 be replaced by them. So that on hill, grass slope, 
 or flanking the walk the furry green of white pines 
 or the fretwork of spruce and hemlock barred out 
 winter desolation, while the living green in the form 
 of younger bird-sown seedlings of the old trees 
 crosses the woody pasture until it blends with the
 
 156 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 sombre tone of the native red cedars that gather 
 round the bars. 
 
 Woman ; you who have bought the bit of ground 
 with trees on the cross-road, that your children may 
 be born to country life, plant evergreens in the north 
 for a windbreak and on the south for a pleasure to 
 the eye. Not the new-fangled blue spruces, golden 
 hemlocks fit only to be confined to the lawn as 
 breeze-excluding ornaments, or the stunted firs of 
 florist's catalogues, but the sturdy old forest trees 
 that rear their heads laughing in the gale and grow 
 mightily, white pines and the Scotch fir of ruddy 
 bark, white and black spruce of long or clustering 
 cones, graceful hemlock spruce, and the dwarfer bal 
 sam fir of fragrant breath. 
 
 These are the things of the garden of winter that 
 none may spare, and they also become welcome 
 havens to the birds that are brave enough to bear us 
 company. 
 
 I was quite soothed by the prospect before me in 
 combination with the warmth of Bluff's body, for he 
 sat leaning against my knees with his chin resting in 
 my hands and eyes fixed on my face. A knock on 
 the door broke the spell. 
 
 Enter Martha Corkle, neat, respectful, but evidently 
 labouring under excitement.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 157 
 
 " Mrs. Evan, what ham I ? You having told me 
 never to take kitchen complaints to Mr. Evan, I'm 
 obliged to ask you, and no disrespect intended, what 
 I ham." 
 
 For a moment I thought she had lost her mind, 
 then I realized that Aunt Lot's visit to the kitchen 
 had probably created some sort of storm, and that 
 Martha's query was a bit of the wreckage, so I 
 waited for further information. 
 
 " Ham I 'ousekeeper with hauthority over the two 
 maids, or only cook ? and if but cook, does my word 
 'old in the kitchen?" 
 
 Shades of inherited service descending upon an 
 overfree country, this was indeed a dilemma ! I 
 temporized from lack of ability to express in suit 
 able words the entire liberty of the house servant. 
 Perchance if Martha understood, she would be 
 reasonable, for I simply would not have domestic 
 broils. 
 
 "You are Martha Corkle, Mr. Evan's old nurse, 
 of whom he thought so much that when he left 
 his old home he brought you away with him. I 
 knew that our ways are not yours, and I was 
 afraid that you would be unhappy ; but I did not 
 want to disappoint the master by telling him so, 
 and I thought that a familiar face might make it
 
 158 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 seem more homelike here to him. In this coun 
 try, unless it is a great household of many men 
 and maids, we do not put one in authority over the 
 others, for the mistress is the housekeeper. 
 
 "You are the cook, and it is your place to be 
 motherly and make the kitchen pleasant to the 
 others who are younger and have not the advan 
 tage of your training; but if they make you dis 
 comfort that you cannot avoid, tell me, and I will 
 speak to them. What was the trouble to-day ? " 
 
 "Tea, Mrs. Evan, tea and pins on my pastry 
 board. Not but what the allowance is liberal 
 enough and to spare for the extra cup that it 
 makes a body feel homelike to draw when they so 
 likes, but the quality. I stand by English break 
 fast as the wholesomest and most tasty, Eliza and 
 Delia prefers rank oolong, which I hold puckers 
 the stomach and coppers it. 
 
 "This morning you wrote the order for the 
 grocer for so much tea, at so much a pound weight, 
 without mention of the kind. I tells him break 
 fast, Delia says oolong. When I disputes her 
 right, she says that two wants it, and over here 
 the majority rules ! and I want to know must I 
 have my inwards coppered or drop tea ? " 
 
 The situation was both comical and pathetic, for
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 159 
 
 in the selfishness of majority rule how often 
 individuality as well as individual right is made to 
 suffer. 
 
 " How about the pins ? " I asked. 
 
 " It is this way. The others being through 
 before me of an afternoon and at leisure for a 
 couple of hours, and their room being overcool 
 for sitting, bring their sewing to my kitchen, and 
 instead of keeping it neat and together, Mrs. 
 Evan, they scatters their needles and pins about 
 reckless, yesterday leaving pins on the edge of 
 the board itself where I was making those pa'tridge 
 the doctor bagged, into a game pasty, and two 
 pins rolled into the hupper crust, it being a mercy 
 that they pointed up and I saw them. The blame 
 of them would be to me, and yet I have no say-so 
 to stop it." 
 
 My native spunk urged me to say that she had 
 better return home if she was discontented, but 
 then my Familiar Spirit who often talks with me 
 and sometimes gives good advice, made a sugges 
 tion ; for after all, there was reason under the 
 grievance, and that is too often overlooked in 
 kitchen matters. Surely the girls should have a 
 place to sit and sew. 
 
 "Martha," I said, "there are many things that
 
 160 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 I shall readjust and change, but I cannot do it at 
 once. Let us both be patient and help each other 
 for Mr. Evan's sake. 
 
 "You shall have your own allowance of break 
 fast tea, and the others their oolong, for they, also, 
 have a right of choice ; and to-morrow I will have 
 the little storeroom out of the kitchen cleaned 
 and fitted for a sitting room, with table, lamp, a 
 spare sofa from upstairs, and, perhaps, a sewing- 
 machine, and then it will be against the rule to 
 have sewing in the kitchen. But if you still feel 
 discontented in the spring, I'm sure Mr. Evan 
 will send you home again." 
 
 " I'm not for goin' that far in complaints, Mrs. 
 Evan," she replied, in evident horror at striking 
 her colours or at implied desertion of one of " the 
 family," even if only the youngest son. "And 
 now that you understand me, Mrs. Evan, is con- 
 solin,' and I'll say no more, as the pins is to 
 
 go." 
 
 Exit Martha Corkle. 
 
 The clumping made by her flat, stout, English 
 shoes on the stairs had hardly ceased when it 
 seemed to begin again. Was she returning? 
 
 No, Bluff gave the growl that announced a 
 stranger, who knocked with masculine vigour.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 161 
 
 Enter Mrs, Mullins, a one-time cook, but now 
 a portly Irish matron, owner of a smooth tongue, 
 that lies comfortably and coaxes successfully, a 
 cow, two pigs, numerous fowls, and an onion field, 
 in addition to a husband and five daughters. In 
 spite of being a perfectly healthy woman, she had 
 come to father at diverse times with the symptoms 
 of all the ordinary diseases at her tongue's end, of 
 which same troubles she was miraculously cured by 
 chalk powders and brown dough pills, so I went 
 directly for her chief foible. 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Mullins, what is amiss with you to 
 day ? Is the pain in your head or your heels ? for 
 you are too thrifty to leave home before dinner 
 time merely to make a call." 
 
 "And yer right and yer wrong, Miss Barbara, 
 darlint ; God forgive me, for Mrs. it is ! I'm never 
 the one for gallivantin' in the mornin' widout cause ; 
 but, all the same, the trouble's not mine, but an 
 other's, and as it's well-nigh noon, I'll make short 
 words of it. It's Dalia. Your Dalia that has shook 
 off her match and has asked me, she bein' ashamed 
 to face it and expectin' reproaches, if you'll kape 
 her on in her place, for she's entoirely out of the 
 notion of marriage." 
 
 "Delia not going to be married! and her wedding
 
 162 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 gown bought, and the date set for Christmas, after 
 all the talk of the fine house Patsy's mother was 
 to deed to them on the wedding day?" 
 
 "That same talk's the meat of the trouble en- 
 toirely, Dalia give out about the day and the 
 house, Mrs. Doolan she smoiled an' says, 'There's 
 toime enough yet. Patsy's but a lad, only thirty- 
 five come Easter next. Av course, and him my only 
 son and me a widdy, when I bespoke Dalia for him ' 
 (for they do say it was the mother that fixed the 
 match to plaze him, Patsy bein' too bashful), ' I 
 give promise o' the house on the weddin' day,' givin' 
 a big wink, 'but that same day is not yit set.' 
 
 " Dalia claimed she'd bring Mother Doolan round 
 all so fine, and worked Patsy to backing her up, for 
 as they'd been keepin' company, two years come 
 Michaelmas, she'd the right of thinkin' of being 
 settled, and settled now it is. It wor well before 
 dark Hallowe'en when Patsy come creepin' up the 
 lane wid Dalia, she laughin' and confident, well 
 pleased wid herself, and castin' her black eyes 
 around sassy like. But he wor unaisy, and all 
 broken out on the face wid sweat, though a cool 
 evenin'. 
 
 " Says I to my oldest daughter Kate, who was 
 home, there bein' a strike in the shoeshop, ' Puttin' it
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 163 
 
 together wid the words the old woman spoke the day, 
 they're a-walkin' reckless near home.' ' Look, mother, 
 for the love o' heaven, they're a-goin' in ! Dalia 
 t'reatened to have it out, and there'll be music for sure.' 
 
 " And widout another word, us two, being o' wan 
 moind, clipped out in the shed that commands Doo- 
 lan's premises through a knot-hole that Katie's 
 enlarged a bit for convaynience. But I hadn't got 
 me best eye placed comfortable, the doctor, bless 
 him, knows well the trouble I had wid me off eye, 
 when something flew out o' Doolan's front door, dasht 
 boy, and up the lane to the turnpoike. 
 
 " When I got me soight straight, I saw it was them 
 three all a-sprintin' for dear loife. Patsy was a 
 leadin', Dalia a-followin', givin' him her mind for 
 outrunnin' her. Old Mrs. Doolan, a lashin' the air 
 wid a big broom, was but a step in the rear. 
 
 " ' But there'll be murther done/ says I to Katie, 
 and we shlipt down the road behind the cedar 
 bushes. In that we was dishappointed, for just be 
 fore they all reached the turn, Dalia passed Patsy, 
 givin' him a terrible cuff, and callin', ' Take that, 
 ye quakin' bowl o' mush ! ' that he stumbled and 
 fell into the ditch, from which Mrs. Doolan had him 
 out in an eyewink, and was leadin' him home by the 
 ear like a sthrayed pig.
 
 164 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Not a word was spoke the noight, but come All 
 Saints' mornin' I took up wid Mrs. Doolan goin' to 
 mass. 
 
 " ' Mrs. Mullins,' says she, ' will yer belayve me, 
 Patsy's that fond o' me he can't think o' marriage, 
 and he's broke wid Dalia, but a nice farm he'll get 
 the day he does it, though he do claim the girl's not 
 born he'd look at along o' me. Yer might ha' heard 
 him swearin' it only lasht night.' 
 
 " ' Bad cess but I didn't,' thought I ; but I said, 
 ' Sure the boy's but a lad,' to kape the peace, me pig 
 sty a lappin' a bit on her land, the same convaynienc- 
 ing me greatly. 
 
 " That night Patsy he come a-bawlin' and prayin' 
 to me to coax Dalia to see him, and a-sayin' he'd lave 
 the old woman if Dalia'd make up ; and I had fair to 
 trap her at our house, she was that contrary. 
 
 " ' Dalia, darlint, whatever'll I do ? Have patience ! 
 the old woman won't last forever,' he playded, the 
 tears streamin' from him; 'and if ye lave me, I'll go 
 drown for sure,' he begged on his two knees. 
 
 " ' She's long outlasted my notion for you,' quoth 
 Dalia, ' and her dyin' would change nothin'. There's 
 two buried in your grave already, and she'd be over- 
 near the top for safety. I've got sense, thanks to 
 you, Patsy Doolan, which is what I lacked before.'
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 165 
 
 And she walked out, and Patsy he got up from his 
 two knees, and to kape his word went out and 
 drowned hisself in drink before witnesses in Grogan's 
 saloon." 
 
 Mrs. Mullins talked so rapidly, hurried by a keen 
 relish of her subject, that I followed her with diffi 
 culty, divided between laughter and admiration of 
 Delia's spirit. So when Mrs. Mullins creaked down 
 stairs, she carried the tidings to the girl that, failing 
 of being a bride, she might still be a waitress without 
 reproach. 
 
 Having a healthy appetite, and no woman being 
 within reach with whom I could discuss the morn 
 ing's happenings, thereby magnifying their impor 
 tance, I went in search of luncheon, and by the time 
 it appeared, together with father, the only part of the 
 trilogy of woes that seemed worth repeating was Mrs. 
 Mullins's account of the failure of Delia's venture in 
 real estate.
 
 THE GARDEN OF BOOKS 
 
 December 3. Winter has come in a single night, 
 the picturesque winter of Christmas cards wrapped 
 snugly in ermine robes and travelling to the jingle of 
 sleigh bells. It is only occasionally that he travels in 
 this guise, more often coming as gaunt Black Frost 
 with the northwind for pace-maker, trampling the 
 naked fields with mailed feet, freezing the very pith 
 of the leafless trees, numbing the huddled birds as 
 they glean seed in the furrows, and making us feel 
 the hopeless cruelty of Nature's sterner moods when 
 unassuaged by human kindness. 
 
 However fickle our climate may be, it is never 
 monotonous, and so after three open, or at least 
 snowless winters, to-morrow many sleighs will be let 
 down from the lofts where they were fast sinking into 
 Rip van Winkle sleep, while wolf skins and buffalo 
 robes, the relics of a vanished tribe, will leave the 
 camphor chests, and again see the light of day. 
 
 166
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 167 
 
 Night before last was the time of the "watch fires." 
 The sun went down with the clear red afterglow that 
 in summer usually indicates the coming of hot dry 
 weather. The air in fact was warm, of the real 
 Indian summer softness, such as often continues for 
 many weeks after the killing frosts of middle No 
 vember. 
 
 I am glad that the watch fires are still kept up. I 
 remember being wakened, wrapped in a blanket, and 
 taken out to light my first fire. Father himself 
 started the custom, and I feared that it might have 
 died out during my absence, with other signs of the 
 seasons that add so much to country living. 
 
 All through the autumn, as the farmers cut the 
 brush from meadow edges or cleared weeds and stub 
 ble from the corn-fields, fires would be seen at night, 
 the leisure time they took for burning the rubbish. 
 Oftentimes these fires were lighted, and being left to 
 tend themselves, spread, doing much damage, or else 
 a conflagration of house or barn was thought to be 
 merely a brush fire, and so neighbourly aid was with 
 held. 
 
 For these reasons father had suggested that 
 every one should gather his rubbish as usual, but 
 wait to burn it until the first night of winter, when 
 all the neighbourhood could be out and on the
 
 168 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 watch to see and enjoy the bonfires that flickered 
 from hill to hill quite out to the point that runs 
 into the bay, and make a festival of " watching in " 
 winter. 
 
 Evan and I went together to the hilltop well back 
 of the house and woods, where Bertie had collected 
 a grand pyre of stubble, shrub trimmings, and weed 
 hay from the roadsides, all capped and held in place 
 by pine and hemlock boughs that had been cut away 
 in clearing the meandering cowpath that was to be 
 the walk through our wild garden in the wood lot. 
 
 It was a beautiful night, the many voices coming 
 from afar and the vivid flames lent an air of newness 
 and mystery to familiar surroundings. Every time 
 Evan stirred the pile with his fork, the landscape 
 perspective changed, and now and then a weasel, 
 a fox, or some other little night-prowling animal, 
 startled from its lair, would dart, across a streak of 
 light, to be instantly swallowed by the darkness again. 
 
 Finally the last flicker died away ; and when noth 
 ing remained but a glowing circle of embers that 
 could do no harm in the middle of the ploughed 
 field, we strolled slowly home, Evan with his coat on 
 his arm, and I fanning my face which the fire had 
 toasted, with my useful but rather dilapidated hat 
 which had seen service as carrier for nuts or small
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 169 
 
 tufts of ebony spleenwort, pipsissewa, or partridge 
 berry that from time to time I added to the little wild 
 fernery that lives in the middle of the dinner table. 
 
 " Are you ready for winter ? " asked Evan, who 
 had been away for a few days' visit to an F. M. (an 
 American title signifying Financial Mightiness) 
 whose recent purchase of a tract of forest, field, and 
 river was to be turned into a home park. 
 
 " Is any one ever ready to be shut in or see the 
 friendly earth so seemingly dead ? But if you mean 
 have I done all the outdoor gardening that is pos 
 sible before spring, I can certainly say that I have, 
 and that I am ready for winter. The narcissus, 
 Bermuda lilies, Roman hyacinths, early tulips, and 
 freezias are all potted and buried in the cold frame, 
 ready to be brought in succession as house plants. 
 I've sown ounces, in fact quite half a pound of 
 Shirley poppy seed in front of the hardy plants, the 
 entire length of the walk on the way to the sun 
 garden ; the perennials have cedar bough windbrakes 
 over them, the old roses are mulched with coarse 
 litter, and the new ones are all bonneted with straw 
 after the most approved fashion. The only thing 
 remaining to be done when the ground freezes for 
 good is to cover the bulbs outside the study win 
 dows.
 
 i/o THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Then," said Evan, slyly, " I think I shall not be 
 interfering with your garden operations if I bring 
 home some plans to-morrow night and work over 
 them here where I can be free from interruptions. 
 Incidentally, I might spare a few hours of daylight 
 to unpack my bachelor belongings, and get our 
 books into winter quarters." 
 
 He knew exactly what I should say, or rather do, 
 and he slipped around a tree that we were passing, 
 thereby causing me to embrace it fervently in the 
 dark, bumping my tip-tilted nose. 
 
 Ah, the joy of unexpected holidays ! their ecstasy 
 must be forever missing to the habitually leisure 
 class. Even the dogs sniff the news in the air on 
 the rare autumn field-days that father takes, and by 
 the time he brings out his gun and examines stock 
 and muzzle, they are running circling about in a 
 frenzy of excitement. 
 
 Precisely this feeling possessed me when Evan 
 said that he could do his planning here. Yet such 
 a creature of contrariety am I, that I can imagine 
 nothing more deadly to motive and affection than 
 to have one's husband belong to the American 
 branch of that pernicious institution known as " The 
 Men who Stay at Home." The subtle art of being 
 agreeable though unemployed in the technical sense
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 171 
 
 requires both ' heredity and greater preparation than 
 most of the learned professions, and to be done well 
 must be the outcome of an older and possibly more 
 degenerate civilization than ours. For here, save 
 in exceptional Newport-like communities, "The Man 
 who Stays at Home" must, as far as male com 
 panionship goes, suffer the pangs of Robinson 
 Crusoe loneliness, which does not improve his 
 temper. 
 
 But it is pure joy to have Evan for a few precious 
 days all to myself in the den, where I can sit in the 
 window and watch him make his free-hand water- 
 colour plans from the necessary but stiff scale draw 
 ings, knowing when he is satisfied 'by the way in 
 which he rumples his hair, and when perplexed by 
 his horseshoe scowl. There is something very 
 interesting to me about an occasional horseshoe 
 scowl, savouring as it does of the wild but satisfac 
 tory hero of Miss Edwards's " Barbara's History," 
 one of my favourite novels. 
 
 Yesterday morning the weather was gray and 
 threatening. The lowlands were white with frost, 
 and upon trying to uncover the frame to pick Evan's 
 violets, I found the straw mats frozen to the glass ;
 
 i;2 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 an occasional snowflake drifted through the air, but 
 with the motivelessness of a floating feather. 
 
 Bertie, who has also been a sailor and is wise 'in 
 weather signs, predicted a storm, and suggested, as 
 it was Saturday and there was little to do, that he 
 should drive over to the sawmill for a supply of 
 lumber from which during the next three months he 
 is to construct and fashion new hotbed frames for 
 the spring seeds, garden seats, plant-boxes to screen 
 the piazza., and the framework for supporting the 
 chicken wire upon which sweet peas, nasturtiums, 
 and other summer vines are to be trained. By 
 planning winter work for Bertie we can keep him 
 the year through, and so be spared the uncertainty 
 of looking up a new man every spring, a trial from 
 which many gardens and dispositions suffer. 
 
 By noon, when he returned with the first load, 
 snow was falling in soft, irregular flakes that by three 
 o'clock had grown finer and more persistent, while 
 the wind was rising fast and the pines were swept to 
 and fro by the unseen force. 
 
 Father had taken an all-day drive to Stony Hill for 
 a consultation and must return in the face of the 
 wind. The sudden change made me restless ; I could 
 neither sit still nor stay indoors : so buttoning myself 
 into an ulster with a hood, I called the dogs and
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 173 
 
 started down the long walk to the path through the 
 wood lot. 
 
 The dogs were wild with excitement which they 
 expressed in different ways. Pat alternately tiptoed 
 along and made bounds into the air. The hounds, 
 to whom snow was a novelty, pawed and played 
 with it, took great mouthfuls, then rolled and finally, 
 when exhausted, sat down to rest, only to jump up 
 again, surprised and disappointed at the inhospitable 
 coldness under them. Lark started off, nose to 
 ground, trying to unravel the crossed trails of many 
 rabbits who, evidently surprised by the storm in 
 their daytime forms on the wood edge, had thrown 
 precaution aside and hurried helter-skelter to their 
 holes. Bluff alone stayed close beside me, sniffing 
 and glancing about apprehensively, his tail held close 
 and motionless. 
 
 There was a great flocking of such birds as live 
 with us at this season, and much chattering and com 
 motion. Jays and nut-hatches were hurrying in 
 from the oak woods to the shelter of the evergreens, 
 robins sat in rows, humped and sullen, among the 
 cedars. I could hear the plaintive voices of invisible 
 bluebirds, various sparrow calls, the notes of cross 
 bill and goldfinch, while the occasional " keo-keo " of 
 a distant red-tailed hawk made me feel that strange
 
 174 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 elements were abroad, for such a chorus of alarm 
 cries I had never heard save in the anxious nesting 
 season. 
 
 In some places the snow was even and a couple 
 of inches deep, in others there were tiny drifts, while 
 the cowpath itself was almost bare. The seeded 
 stalks of goldenrod* mullein, and the lattice-work of 
 the wild grapevines took fantastic shapes from the 
 clinging snow, above which the Christmas ferns 
 emerged crisp and shining. 
 
 By the time I reached the end of the path at 
 the bars and turned to go back, I began to realize 
 the blinding power of snow, for both the fall and the 
 wind had increased ; night seemed to be coming, 
 and I was almost obliged to grope my way. In 
 crossing the sun garden I walked into the dial post, 
 in turning aside from the apple tree, I found my 
 self under the rose arbour on my way to the barn 
 instead of near the house, so I continued on to put 
 Pat and the hounds into their night quarters in the 
 stable. 
 
 As I opened the door, half a dozen j uncos flew in 
 after me, and bunched half exhausted in the bottom 
 of a hay-rack. I called Bertie and told him to open 
 one of the ventilating windows in the hay-barn, on 
 the side away from the wind, and there was also
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 175 
 
 shelter for the birds under the various sheds. Fi 
 nally I struggled back to the house, surprised to find 
 myself quite spent. 
 
 Martha Corkle was in a state of ill-concealed 
 alarm, which made her head shake ominously, in 
 spite of a painstaking dignity. 
 
 " Mrs. Evan," she whispered, when I went to the 
 kitchen the more quickly to get a needed cup of tea, 
 " Mrs. Evan, it's a mercy the 'ouse is well victualled 
 and blankets and coals in plenty. The last time I 
 saw a storm come up like this, I was but a girl, 
 serving Mr. Evan's uncle in his shooting lodge in 
 Scotland, to the which same place he had gone to 
 keep Christmas. 
 
 " The snow came that deep that we were not dug 
 out until Twelfth Night, and there were shepherds, 
 sheep, and cattle being turned up at times until 
 spring; the same, of course, being stiffened corpses, 
 the thought making me fearful for the doctor and 
 Timothy Saunders." 
 
 I laughingly told her that with the stout gray 
 horses in a country of travelled roads, a few inches 
 of snow meant no danger; nevertheless, I was 
 relieved when, a little before six, father returned. 
 
 " I've known nothing like it except the great 
 storm of '88," he said, stamping the snow from his
 
 i;6 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 shoes, while the whistling wind nearly drowned his 
 voice, " and this time yesterday you were sitting out 
 on the porch, Barbara, and I was driving without 
 an overcoat." 
 
 The telephone bell rang, blessed nuisance ! Evan 
 was detained in town, but would arrive at nine ; we 
 were not to wait dinner, and the storm was not yet 
 bad at that end of the line. This comforting mes 
 sage was the last word the telephone uttered for 
 five days. 
 
 At a quarter to ten Evan came home, snow hang 
 ing to his face, bearding it white as Santa Claus. 
 After a bit of supper we all went to bed, feeling a 
 strange sensation of suppressed excitement, for the 
 wind was shrill as when keyed by a ship's rigging, 
 in spite of the muffling snow that fell with a posi 
 tive sifting sound. Bluff and Lark, who usually 
 slept on the door mats in the lower hall, insisted 
 upon coming upstairs, whining and fidgeting until 
 in self-defence we let them in, when Lark crawled 
 behind the lounge, and Bluff stretched himself beside 
 my bed, whence he arose at intervals to lick my hand 
 or nose as if in assurance of protection. 
 
 This morning there were none of the usual 
 sounds of day. About these, however, the commuter 
 troubles himself but little on Sunday. The dense
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 177 
 
 silence was more disturbing than positive sound and 
 seemed to press upon the brain. I think the 
 present experience has taught me an intense pity 
 for the deaf, who in the midst of moving objects 
 must perpetually feel this tenseness and pressure 
 of silence. 
 
 Outside was a world of snow which was three feet 
 deep on a level and everywhere billowed into fanciful 
 drifts. There were no paths, no fences ; one 
 unbroken sheet stretched from the front door, 
 covering bank-wall, and road, levelling them with 
 the field beyond. 
 
 It was impossible to open the east door, so 
 deeply was the snow heaped against it, and the 
 dogs cowered and refused to go out, even by 
 the back way, where the wind had left a bare 
 spot. 
 
 Bertie had not appeared, and Tim with difficulty 
 fought his way in, bringing the milk pails, and 
 has remained here ever since. It was of no use to 
 attempt the breaking of paths while it was still 
 snowing, and an effort to, free even the "back stoop 
 was as foolish as the proverbial task of sweeping 
 the wind off the roof. 
 
 Father tried to call up the hospital, but the tele 
 phone was useless. The lack of church bells told the
 
 i;8 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 plight of the village, and so we had a day of absolute 
 and enforced rest in which to arrange and plant our 
 indoor garden of books. 
 
 The one-time parlour across the hall from father's 
 study and office had been developing (I suppose 
 Aunt Lot would say degenerating) into a comfortable 
 den for a month past 
 
 The best chairs that for so many years had stood 
 primly back against the wall were scattered about 
 the room, their places taken by a continuous line 
 of book-shelves of a height that left picture space 
 above. The claw-footed mahogany table was drawn 
 well into the bay and littered with books and maga 
 zines in a way that must have surprised it. A pair 
 of scroll-ended mahogany sofas faced each other 
 on either side of the fireplace, improvising a sort 
 of ingle nook, their antique and inhospitable hair 
 cloth hidden by the bright, harmonious colours of 
 some Mexican rugs. The north window was Evan's 
 lair; an open bookcase jutted out on either side to 
 form an alcove with a wide-topped desk between, 
 while I had a somewhat similar nook by an odd, 
 doorlike casement at one side of the fireplace. A 
 great rug and a few big chairs made up the 
 furniture, leaving plenty of room for ' living, moving, 
 and having our being.' A woman educated by men
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 179 
 
 soon learns the importance of having standing room 
 within as well as out of doors. 
 
 There are many things that make the account of 
 the miracle of the loaves and fishes not only seem 
 possible but quite an everyday affair, and the 
 unpacking and rearranging of books is one of 
 them. 
 
 The plants in my book garden, like those of the 
 hardy beds, were jumbled together, regardless of 
 size, colour, or season, and quite overflowed the 
 space allotted them. Evan suggested that as in the 
 outdoor garden, when pressed for room, we should 
 dispense with most of the annuals, the books of but 
 a few months' bloom, which having served to brighten 
 a brief period, have no lasting qualities, and send 
 them to the hospital, thus giving first place to the 
 books of perennial delight and to the biennials, 
 those volumes that one turns to at least every other 
 year. To this I agreed, until I found that opinion 
 plays a large part in the hardiness of books, and 
 that they cannot be as arbitrarily classified as flower 
 seeds. 
 
 My little library was built up of three periods, 
 childhood, girlhood, womanhood ; or boyhood would 
 have been a triter term for the first, as boys' books 
 preponderated at this time. Strange, isn't it, that
 
 i8o THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 sex should be asserted in books at a time when 
 the readers are the most sexless, and then quite 
 disappear as the readers themselves develop ! Books 
 are written for girls and boys, " The Boy's Own Book," 
 "The Girl's Toymaker," but never " A Novel for a 
 Woman," or " A History for a Man " appears. 
 
 The first period of reading stood by itself and 
 ranged from Grimm's and Laboulaye's " Fairy 
 Tales," " The Wilds of Africa," " Tommy Try and 
 What He Did in Science," " Robinson Crusoe," an 
 expurgated Gulliver, "Alice's Adventures" and "Hia 
 watha," from which I made a play wholly my own, 
 to certain famous histories and biographies that may 
 be read from childhood to old age, each reading 
 yielding new meaning according to the development 
 of the reader. 
 
 Girlhood began with Clarke's " Shakespeare's 
 Heroines," Strickland's " Queens," " Ivanhoe," " The 
 Pathfinder," and " Little Women," a combination 
 of the literary, martial, and domestic, that was much 
 to my taste. Then for a long time history in all its 
 branches, especially that of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 reigned supreme, and with it came folklore. In a 
 single year, according to the dates written on the 
 neat record book-plates father had given me, I be 
 came possessed of Brand's "Popular Antiquities,"
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 181 
 
 the convenient Bohn edition of the " Chronicles of 
 Mathew of Westminster," " Florence of Worcester," 
 "Roger de Hovenden," "Ingulph," and the "Ven 
 erable Bede," besides Plutarch's " Lives," and the 
 ponderous volumes of Schoolcraft upon our own In 
 dians, from whom I then fancied myself descended. 
 Natural history and the poetical side of nature 
 came later. Figuier's works and Emerson's " Trees 
 and Shrubs of Massachusetts " hovered about my 
 seventeenth birthday with a bevy of bird books. It 
 had never before seemed any more necessary for me 
 to locate the birds, with which I was wholly familiar 
 and which were my field companions, and analyze 
 them by means of books, than to search the town 
 records for statistics concerning my neighbours whose 
 habits and daily lives were open to me. The next 
 year I met Thoreau quite informally, though he had 
 always been within easy reach, like the near neigh 
 bour upon whom it is so easy to call that we put it 
 off, and Wilson Flagg went with me to the attic on 
 rainy summer days in guise of " Woods and By 
 ways of New England," and its companion " Birds 
 and Seasons," while Burroughs and Hamilton Gib 
 son were as a pair of rose-coloured glasses through 
 which I learned at once to differentiate and to beau 
 tify everyday things, though far back two books
 
 182 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 belonging to mother had set this door ajar. They 
 were both Michelet's " The Bird " and " The Ocean." 
 
 Then books on plants and gardening followed 
 thick and fast, and I picked up a few inexpensive 
 oddities at the book sales when I went with father, 
 sometimes venturing to bid myself, the " Flora His- 
 torica " of Phillips, two quaint volumes on the Three 
 Seasons of the British Parterre being one of the 
 results of my prowess; while the first book that 
 Evan gave me was the rare North American Sylva 
 of Michaux and Nuttall, with coloured plates. 
 
 As Evan began to sort and stack the books, I 
 stood by in a state of increasing alarm as one fav 
 ourite after another went to build up the pile of 
 annuals. I saw the Rollo books and "The Wide, 
 Wide World " depart without a sigh. I never 
 cared for them except when I was rather feeble 
 physically, as after whooping-cough or the mumps ; 
 but when "The Parent's Assistant" and Hooker's 
 "Child's Book of Nature" followed, together with 
 "The English Orphans," "Les Malheurs de Sophie," 
 one of my early French books, "The Children's and 
 the Schoolgirl's Garland " of Mrs. Kirkland, and 
 "The Struggles and Triumphs of P. T. Barnum," 
 a souvenir of a festive trip to the circus, I pro 
 tested.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 183 
 
 "Do you ever read these books?" quoth Evan, 
 who was momentarily becoming aware that, accord 
 ing to the habit with book lovers, as far as the 
 the shelf room was concerned we were expecting to 
 have more than a cat in her skin. 
 
 " Of course I haven't recently." 
 
 " Do you ever expect to again ? " 
 
 " I'm not sure that is, I may wish to. I used to 
 like them, and I do now, though I can't tell why." 
 
 "I will give you an idea," said Evan, as he saw 
 my expression. " Range them along the attic 
 shelves and call them the garden of remembrance, 
 where you may stray for memory's sake, just as we 
 keep in an odd corner of the outdoor garden some 
 old-time flowers whose use is gone, whose beauty is 
 questionable, and yet the remembrances they bring 
 entitle them to life." 
 
 It was slow work, this arranging; for almost 
 every volume had something to say or a reason to 
 give why it should be planted in a particular nearby 
 case. It was noon before we had more than made 
 a beginning. 
 
 Then there was a temporary interruption caused 
 by the appearance of a man who lived far up the 
 road. He was first seen coming zig-zag along the 
 stone fences steadying himself with a pole. He
 
 184 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 disappeared twice in fifty yards from losing his foot 
 ing and stepping into a drift, and when he finally 
 reached the kitchen door he was exhausted, having 
 been several hours in coming less than two miles. 
 His quest was some milk for his baby, as of 
 course the local pedler who usually supplied him 
 had failed. 
 
 After he had rested and been fed with hot soup, 
 Tim went to start him on his way back along a 
 more direct line of fencing, while we ate our mid 
 day meal in unusual awestruck silence. Still the 
 snow fell and the wind blew without cessation. 
 
 Every now and then a bird driven from cover by 
 hunger, would be dashed against a window, and 
 before night half a dozen such unfortunates had 
 been fed and were resting in an open-work basket 
 in the kitchen. 
 
 A sharp-shinned hawk, the wildest of its tribe 
 perched for so long on the trellis of the porch that 
 Evan had full time to sketch its half-defiant, half- 
 cowed attitude. 
 
 Back to the den we went, and after the books 
 were housed, then came the placing of the pictures. 
 I had some Houbraken prints of Shakespeare, 
 Chaucer, Spenser, etc., and my special pride, a beau 
 tiful copper engraving of Van Dyck's Charles the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 185 
 
 First, with his war horse, a print full of light and 
 brilliant blacks. Evan has a Rembrandt's Three 
 Trees, Earlom's mezzotint fruit and flower pieces, two 
 " Kit Kat" pictures by Kneller, of Dick Steele and 
 Congreve in the same style as father's Dr. Garth of 
 Dispensary fame, Tonson, the bookseller, an engrav 
 ing of the two Tradescants, gardeners to Queen 
 Elizabeth, a set of coloured prints of men of the Lin- 
 naean school, in which the head is as it were framed 
 in an engraved oval. He has, besides, a dozen last- 
 century prints, also coloured, of many famous gar 
 dens of the Thames, Hampton Court, Vauxhall, 
 Kew, Ranelegh, and St. James's Park ; and lastly, 
 the very apple of his eye, an engraving on copper 
 representing Charles the Second with his spaniels in 
 the gardens of the Duchess of Cleveland at Dauney 
 Court, while Rose the gardener is in the act of pre 
 senting the king with the first English-grown pine 
 apple. 
 
 At last all was arranged, the garden pictures mak 
 ing a harmonious frieze above the book -shelves. 
 Only one gap remained ; the broad panel over the 
 mantelshelf was quite empty. 
 
 " Something will turn up, as usual," said Evan, 
 shrugging his shoulders as we laughed at the omis 
 sion, for we should have begun with filling this space.
 
 1 86 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Some day I will have a portrait painted for this 
 panel. It shall be of you, Barbara, in the garden 
 with Bluff, your faithful squire, at your feet. Who 
 shall the artists be ? It will need three, a por 
 trait, an animal, and a flower painter." 
 
 " Meanwhile, take this," said father, crossing the 
 hall, carrying a portrait in a plain Dutch oak frame, 
 that had long hung over his study mantel. 
 
 " Linnaeus ! Are you really going to part with 
 him ? " I cried, in joyful amazement. " You angelic 
 father! it is the one thing needful to complete the 
 room. But our old shrine will be desolate." 
 
 " The truth is, Barbara, I've something to replace 
 it. You know how long I've been collecting por 
 traits of the men that were the founders of my pro 
 fession, both medical and surgical, the Houbraken 
 Harvey, Galen, Sydenham, Pare, and all the rest ? 
 After your Aunt Lot's marriage, I seized the oppor 
 tunity to group them in one large frame, without 
 being reproached for extravagance, thus putting 
 these worthies in a house with many windows, as it 
 were, where, being together, each may keep his sepa 
 rate point of view. But disliking to disturb anything 
 your wish had placed, I let Linnaeus keep his shrine, 
 storing the prints close at hand in my office closet, 
 until your return."
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 187 
 
 Dear father ! the buying of the Linnaeus portrait 
 had been one of our booksale romances that had 
 culminated in the Dodoen's " Herbal" and Evan. It 
 happened on a dreary February day. Father was 
 browsing along a line of dingy books in the auction 
 room, scanning them closely in the dim light, when 
 his foot struck against a picture-frame that rested on 
 the floor, causing it to tip forward. A hasty glance at 
 the face interested him, and he asked an attendant to 
 move the frame into the light. It was the portrait 
 of a man done in oils, life size, and a little more than 
 waist length. The face was clear cut and alert, the 
 head covered by a white wig that curled above the 
 ears. A dark green coat with red collar opening 
 slightly over a buff vest was finished at neck and 
 wrist by lace frills. A glance told that the hands 
 were beautifully painted, the flesh being firm and the 
 colour true. The right hand, partly resting on a 
 stand, was half closed over a few flowers, while the 
 left was held palm out and half extended, as if 
 in explanation. The background was quite dark, 
 though a church spire could be distinguished at one 
 side, and a festoon of ivy on the other. 
 
 " A fine piece of colour, and the face seems 
 strangely familiar," said father, adjusting his 
 " nearby " glasses. " What do they call him ? "
 
 i88 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " ' A Gentleman in a White Wig,' " I replied, on re 
 ferring to the catalogue where half a dozen pictures 
 and some prints were listed with the books. 
 
 " A true though certainly not very enlightening 
 title," mused father, still looking at the face with 
 narrowed eyes. " Barbara, I believe this is no less 
 than a portrait of Linnaeus. Those are not decora 
 tive flowers, but botanical specimens, a wild rose 
 and a spray of agrimony, toward which he is calling 
 attention with his outstretched hand, possibly in 
 lecturing. That steeple is of the church in whose 
 manse garden he played when a boy. I'll not say 
 that it is an original painting, but probably a copy 
 of some museum picture abroad, of which there may 
 be fifty others floating about unrecognized. Still it 
 is good, and bears a certain resemblance to prints that 
 I have seen, and I've a mind to buy it." 
 
 " Do, for I am simply in love with it," I assented, 
 "and Aunt Lot doesn't squirm so much about pic 
 tures as over books. But I won't believe it's a 
 copy. The brush marks are free and without a 
 draggle or stumble. Who knows but it is a master 
 piece gone astray ? At any rate, we will christen it 
 ' Linnaeus ' at once, and make a shrine for it over 
 your study mantel, and always keep wild flowers 
 under it."
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 189 
 
 " First we must buy it, Bab the impetuous," 
 laughed father, " and some one may realize its beauty 
 and easily outbid us, for we have been a week in 
 town, this is the fourth day of the sale, and my purse 
 is pretty thoroughly purged." 
 
 But we bought it, there being only two other 
 competitors, one a man of the buy-anything-cheap 
 type, and the other a real lady collecting ancestors, 
 who would doubtless have outbid us if her daughter 
 had not checked her audibly by saying, " Don't, ma ; 
 you know we agreed to stick to the military line," 
 and so Linnaeus, was knocked down to us for the 
 small sum of twenty dollars, when, as the auc 
 tioneer patronizingly assured us, " The frame alone 
 is quite worth the money, being hand-carved Dutch 
 oak ! " 
 
 Now " Linnaeus " has fitly come to preside over 
 our garden of books, and I still believe that he is 
 all my fancy imagined, and that one day he will 
 be proved his real self, and it will be explained 
 how he came to be travelling incog, as the " Gen 
 tleman with the White Wig." 
 
 Toward four o'clock the storm lightened, but it 
 was too late for road breaking. Then the wind
 
 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 blew again, and more snow and nightfall came to 
 gether. Two hearth-fires glowed, and father sat in 
 his study and looked contentedly across the hall, 
 silent save for a soliloquy on the contrariety of 
 new-fangled notions when, after running his paper 
 knife in a leisurely way as usual through the top 
 pages of a magazine, he began to read and found 
 the leaves were joined at the bottom. 
 
 8 P. M. Evan has been to the barn with Tim, 
 and reports the sky clear and the stars bright, and 
 promises that in the morning I shall ride on the 
 snow plough that breaks the first road. 
 
 A crude implement this snow plough, merely a tri 
 angle of timber with a platform set midway, the 
 horse being fastened by a whiffle-tree to one of 
 the points. Ah, but I remember the excitement of 
 it all, the buffeting and breaking the way through 
 the trackless whiteness, and even the half-acid 
 taste of the crisp snow I ate to quench my thirst. 
 My face tingles already at the thought of it. 
 
 Lark and Bluff, however, were not happy. First 
 they stretched before one fire, then the other, and 
 finally took up their places in the hall, Bluff facing 
 one way, and Lark the other, so that they could 
 see both halves of the family and nothing might 
 escape them ; and I, too, sitting in the ingle nook,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 191 
 
 can compass my two lovers with a single glance as 
 I write half by firelight. 
 
 Dear garden of outdoors, I love you best ! but as 
 you vanish, then the door of the garden of books 
 opens to me with its main roads, bypaths, and end 
 less vistas, and I also rejoice at this. Do you realize, 
 you happy, happy Barbara, what it is to have both 
 gardens and both lovers?
 
 XI 
 
 THE TERRIBLE TEMPTATION 
 
 February 10. Why is it that so many people think 
 that charity consists in giving away merely what 
 they cannot use instead of the article the recipient 
 needs ? For it often seems to me that in the eyes of 
 the multitude, it is not until a thing becomes useless 
 that they think of passing it on. 
 
 This miscellaneous unloading of trash upon the 
 hospital reached such a pass at Christmas time that 
 the managers, many of whom were leaving to winter 
 in the city, appointed a Committee of One with 
 Power, to handle the problem. I am It, and my 
 name is Committee for the Reception of Donations 
 Other than Money, a title as long as the duties are 
 various. 
 
 The old way had been to have the gifts sent to the 
 Superintendent's office, thence being distributed at his 
 discretion, or in the case of books, pictures etc., often 
 times to allow visitors themselves to do the giving. 
 
 Murmurs of the lack of tact displayed had often 
 192
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 193 
 
 reached father, but it was only recently that the 
 extent of the abuse first appealed to me. 
 
 I was arranging some Christmas greens in the 
 men's surgical ward, when a poor fellow, an engi 
 neer who had lost both legs through a railway col 
 lision, called me and said with grave face but keen 
 humour twinkling in his hollow eyes : 
 
 " Ma'am, isn't it funny how some well-meanin' 
 folks like to grind a fellow when he's down," and he 
 pointed to a card hanging on the opposite wall, and 
 to a book on the floor beside the cot. The picture 
 was a flaming illuminated text hung by a ribbon. 
 It read, "Arise, take up thy bed and walk!" The 
 book was a sensational account of railway acci 
 dents ! 
 
 The grim humour of the combination struck us 
 both, and we laughed over it heartily as I confis 
 cated book and text, the man telling father after 
 ward that the cheer of the sympathetic laugh was 
 the first thing that encouraged him to get well. 
 
 I bore the articles to the superintendent's office 
 and there listened to a tale from his wife that amazed 
 me. Not only were useless articles of furniture and 
 clothing sent almost daily for which receipts and 
 official thanks were expected, but unsuitable food 
 arrived as well, skim milk on the turn, soggy 
 o
 
 194 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 potatoes, " jellies " that from stinginess with the 
 sugar declined to jell, the last donation of all being 
 a case of fermented fruits from the Lady of the 
 Bluffs. Fruit kept so long that the tin cans had 
 popped at both ends ! together with some equally 
 suspicious tins of deviled ham ! This gift was 
 accompanied by a violet-scented note saying, " If 
 the fruit, a superior California grade, and quite 
 expensive, is nicely and thoroughly cooked, and more 
 sugar added, it will be a refreshing treat to our dear 
 convalescents." Of course such food was destroyed 
 and never given to the patients, but the Village Liar 
 via the Emporium had started the tale that the 
 Superintendent's family " fattened on the delica 
 cies sent to the sick ! " Shades of ptomaine poison ! 
 Was it not time to appoint a Committee of One 
 with Power? 
 
 I have established a food quarantine in a little 
 room off the hospital kitchen, and nothing unsuit 
 able is allowed even to be received ; while all other 
 articles are collected in a loft where once a week I 
 go to inspect and sort them, the useless things being 
 left to accumulate. They will be scattered annually 
 by a well-advertised " rummage sale," to which, if I 
 know human nature, people will flock in order to 
 see if they will recognize any of their neighbours'
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 195 
 
 goods. The proceeds will of course belong to the 
 hospital. 
 
 The Village Liar will doubtless have plenty to say 
 upon the subject. She sent fermented cabbages 
 that were rejected yesterday. The Emporium must 
 also be already bursting with news ; but as the Em 
 porium is treated by a natural herb doctor and the 
 Village Liar is a Christian Scientist, I do not have 
 to come in contact with them either for professional 
 or social reasons. 
 
 These memoranda may seem out of place in my 
 Garden Boke, but then, gardening isn't all earth, 
 the growing of flowers, and the crushing of weeds ; 
 it is the developing of the soul and the body 
 as well. As there are human beings whose very 
 presence seems to bring God nearer, so there are 
 others who by their nothingness send us the more 
 gladly back to the companionship of the* beasts 
 and flowers of the field. Surely there is no greater 
 garden for human-nature study than the flotsam 
 
 and jetsam of the hospital. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Two months of winter gone already ! White 
 winter is never dreary, for the trees are wreathed 
 with snow flowers that bloom by day and night 
 On the shelf around the bay window of the den
 
 196 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 where I am sitting, freezias, Roman hyacinths, pink 
 and yellow oxalis, and cyclamen are in bloom, the 
 delicate colour being enhanced by half a dozen 
 medium-sized plants of the ubiquitous Boston fern 
 (Nephrolepsis Bostoniensis\ This fern should be 
 divided every spring and not allowed to grow too 
 large, as the pots are then heavy to handle, and 
 the fronds are less vigorous and perfect than with 
 the smaller plants. 
 
 Now that we have this fern, there is no excuse 
 for keeping the rubber plant, that abomination of 
 stationary motion that would be quite as satisfac 
 tory if made out of zinc and painted. 
 
 I returned home too late to prepare anything 
 except bulbs for my window garden this season, 
 for pot plants bought of a florist and brought 
 from greenhouse heat to the conditions of a living 
 room soon grow feeble, and seldom adapt them 
 selves to the new condition. From outdoors in is 
 quite change enough to be overcome. 
 
 After all, I am quite sure that bulbs are by far 
 the most satisfactory things for window culture. 
 They may be brought from the frames in succes 
 sion, and removed again to be dried off when out 
 of flower, and what in nature is more pitiful than 
 a pinched and starving house plant ? nothing
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 197 
 
 except the caged wild bird that, grown too feeble 
 even to struggle, sits crouching on the perch, and 
 with dimming eyes looks through the bars toward 
 the sky. 
 
 I have led quite a virtuous and commendable 
 existence these past months ; in fact, ever since 
 the great storm quenched, for the time being at 
 least, the outward manifestation of my gardening 
 passion and forced me indoors, face to face with 
 the domestic occupations of a commuter's wife in 
 a snowy winter. Now we are pruning the fruit 
 trees by degrees, and the days are lengthening. 
 Thirty more of them will bring hotbed making, and 
 the garden is again beginning to lure me in 
 thought. I've devoted a fair share of my days to 
 my fellow-beings and the before-mentioned scan 
 ning of hospital donations. I've made personally 
 and carefully certain concoctions that the sick but 
 respectable poor, with traditions and pasts, associ 
 ate with a self-respecting convalescence, and have 
 taken my wares to the hospital for special cases. 
 It has always been one of my pet amusements to 
 watch people eat the things they enjoy, from chil 
 dren drooling over a lump of sugar upward. 
 Mouths have so many different expressions ; even 
 Bluff's lips look dry and contracted when his meal
 
 198 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 is of dog biscuits, and totally different from the 
 abandon with which they linger over the leavings 
 of kidney stew. 
 
 It is well worth a little effort to see parched, 
 fevered lips moisten with expectancy when I take 
 from my "hospital basket" the glass plate of 
 lemon jelly or glaceed orange, seeded and parted 
 in its natural divisions, sprinkled with sugar and 
 frozen. The jelly, I know, would not be as pala 
 table from a thick hospital saucer. 
 
 True, modern science questions the nutritiveness 
 of many "sick-room messes" of our grandmother's 
 day. Yet father thinks that there is such a thing as 
 satisfying the mental side of an invalid's appetite, 
 which some of the young doctors, learned in every 
 thing except the common-sense of experience, do 
 not understand. For surely there are some nerv 
 ous, homesick conditions, where a little home-made 
 apple sauce is more reviving than a pint of correct 
 and unpalatable peptonoids. 
 
 Besides this work, which I really like next best 
 to sitting in the den with Evan, or gardening, I've 
 done a little sewing in spite of my prejudice, and 
 absolutely made holders for the kitchen, neat car 
 pet cookies covered with ticking, binding them prop 
 erly about the edges with turkey red after Aunt
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 199 
 
 Lot's habit, instead of hobgobbling them with shoe 
 thread as my Familiar Spirit suggested. By the 
 way, this " Familiar " is not of the guardian angel 
 tribe, for it is frequently a suggester of question 
 able short cuts and of shifting purpose, invariably 
 opposing me in argument. 
 
 I have given the village tea, which passed off in 
 a cloud of glory composed of hot oysters, chicken 
 salad, chocolate with whipped cream a-top, sand 
 wiches, biscuit glace, and pistache cake, instead of 
 the usual local sop of salty ice-cream and adaman 
 tine chocolate cake. 
 
 That collation was an inspiration of Evan's. I 
 said, having argued fore and aft about it with my 
 Familiar for two months, 
 
 " I must have this tea as a matter of course, for, 
 you know, having no reception at the time of our 
 wedding, and going away so soon, they scarcely 
 realize us as a unit." 
 
 " Which you are quite determined that they shall 
 do, having made up your mind to that effect, 
 and notified me long ago," said Evan, laughing. 
 " Do you know, Barbara, there have been times 
 when I've been afraid that you were not quite 
 feminine enough to be wholly comfortable in your 
 surroundings, but I shall worry no longer ! "
 
 200 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " What if I do wish to show you to all the peo 
 ple that have known me ever since I was a kitten, 
 even if some of them are well original! Surely 
 there is nothing strange in that." 
 
 Then I, too, was forced to laugh at the complete 
 way in which I had committed myself. 
 
 " We will allow a double motive, then, if you wish, 
 but doing so is a compliment to you, for which you 
 must pay by telling me how to entertain them. Of 
 course they will not come and go as people do in 
 the city when bidden to tea at four, but arrive at 
 the beginning and stay for two hours. Even your 
 charms, great as they are, will hardly withstand 
 such wear and tear. Shall we have some one to 
 recite, a lecture on foreign missions illustrated by 
 magic lantern slides of the India famine and pious 
 Chinese, or will a palmist and some coon songs 
 do ? " 
 
 " Neither one nor the other," Evan answered em 
 phatically. " Put all your strength into a substantial 
 hot collation, order it from town, but do not mention 
 the fact. Food bought ready made suggests hash or 
 something warmed over, as well as a shirking of 
 trouble to the simple rural minds of all countries. 
 Having done this, give them plenty of time to talk, 
 and your success is assured."
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 201 
 
 Perfectly true. On the appointed day Evan came 
 home a little after four, donned his newest frock 
 coat, his most deeply creased trousers, and an ob 
 streperous tie, and pervaded the rooms smiling, and 
 at intervals cheerfully partaking of cake which he 
 never eats, and ice-cream, which always gives him a 
 pain in his nose. Father wafted uneasily about, wear 
 ing his genial expression, but avoided emphatic ex 
 pression of opinion upon any subject. 
 
 The good things disappeared rapidly, and at one 
 time I feared a famine, but I had ordered in accordance 
 with the number invited, and not on the two-thirds prin 
 ciple of the society which suffers from social surfeit. 
 
 The cream pistache cake was the belle of the ball. 
 It was eyed dubiously at first, but every one took a 
 second piece, and Mrs. Haddock from Centreville, dear 
 soul, who had absolutely hired a livery team for the 
 ten-mile drive, an unheard-of extravagance, took a 
 third piece, which she dexterously concealed in her 
 large squirrel muff, whispering to a neighbour : 
 
 " That mustache cake beats me ! It just creams in 
 your mouth without chewin', though the fillin' does 
 appear to be of green peanuts, and the icin' beat up 
 with spinach. I feel called to take a piece home to 
 see what my son's wife makes of it. And do you 
 know," subduing her voice still further, " I'd power-
 
 202 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 ful like to ask what it's named for, but I can't quite 
 fetch myself to. One thing's certain, thSt's a proper 
 smart woman help of Evan's that they fetched over, 
 if she is English. Lot, she never made such cake, 
 let alone bein' so liberal with her victuals." 
 
 The fame of the pistache cake spread. 
 
 I was called upon to furnish the recipe, which was 
 easily obtained, but called for so many ingredients 
 and such skill in making that it impressed them as a 
 species of culinary mathematics. It was decided by 
 the Emporium that we were really well to do, and 
 had not come to live at home because Evan was 
 poor, that he had no intention of peddling vege 
 tables, but owned a whole block of granite stores in 
 the city, and merely went to town to collect his 
 rents. 
 
 Upon such a trifle as the making and liberal 
 distribution of cake does country reputation often 
 hang, while in the city diamond stomachers, an 
 opera box, a yacht, or an automobile would not 
 reflect half so much glory. 
 
 After the tea was quite over, father and Evan 
 disappeared together, and I found them sitting at 
 the pantry table before a deliciously broiled porter 
 house steak and dish of crisp potatoes, which Martha 
 Corkle herself was serving. As I gave her a glance
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 203 
 
 in which question and approval blended, she said by 
 way of explanation, born of the proper English 
 regard of the man's rights in his home, in which, by 
 the way, there was no tone of apology, rather of in 
 struction, 
 
 "The gentlemen needs something hearty, Mrs. 
 Evan. Company food and sweets is most destroying 
 to their habits. In the old days at such times I 
 always served the master a steak in my sitting room 
 with my own hands, I bein' housekeeper then, Mrs. 
 Evan." 
 
 Good woman ! I think if the habits of our American 
 men were not so frequently "destroyed" by haste and 
 by company food, we should be better off. Thank you, 
 Martha Corkle. I am not ashamed to learn of you. 
 
 I should be restless or at least tired and fidgety 
 after these months of indoor life and repression, but 
 I'm not. However, indoor life in the country is only 
 a figure of speech to me at any season, save in the 
 evening; and I've been so well that I've not even 
 had the excuse of a snuffle cold to keep me in bed a 
 single dark, sleepy morning. Now I feel, however, 
 that the grip of civilization is loosening, and since 
 morning I've been confronted and surrounded by a 
 Terrible Temptation, one of the greatest that besets 
 the commuter's wife on gardening bent. All day it
 
 204 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 has been beside me. I have fought it bravely until 
 various tasks were done; for when I once yield, I 
 shall be absorbed and no longer mistress of myself. 
 Now there is a comfortable hour before dinner; 
 Delia, another log for the fire, the lamp with the 
 pale yellow shade, the deepest chair ! I abandon 
 myself and draw the Terrible Temptation to me, 
 the seed catalogues that Evan has collected at the 
 office and then sent in a bunch by the morning 
 mail! 
 
 I sort them over, selecting four, of which all the 
 others are but understudies, and straightway the 
 hope of spring fills my heart and I am once more 
 in the land of expectancy. 
 
 February n (evening). Like the prudent and 
 methodical Plymouth Rock hens who may be seen 
 going in procession to the seclusion of their house at 
 a stated hour every evening, the time being regulated 
 the year round by sunset, so twilight in winter invari 
 ably sees me at home, not dozing, but drawing my 
 keenest mental stimulus from father and Evan ; for 
 as they spend their days in active contact with their 
 fellow-men, their evening desire is of peace. 
 
 Many of the troubles of country living would dis-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 205 
 
 appear if people would only cease dragging in city 
 hours and conventionalities, or I might even say the 
 hours and conventionalities of other climates and 
 countries. 
 
 In England, city or country, it is the universal 
 custom to wear low bodices to even informal dinners, 
 but that does not make it a suitable habit to intro 
 duce amid New England rigours. It is sheer folly, 
 as well as the custom of half-past seven or eight 
 o'clock dinner in houses where the same maids, or 
 often a single maid, must be ready to prepare and 
 serve breakfast at seven or half-past the next morn 
 ing. It is things like these that make the commuter's 
 servants a floating population, and the employers 
 themselves the butt of comic papers. 
 
 Hereabout a few of the summer people have tried 
 to set an electric pace in everything, but long ago 
 father and I agreed that we should keep to simple 
 ways; when I dined from home or others came to 
 us, T might wear the gayest, brightest gown I could 
 concoct, but never bare my shoulders. For we out 
 of town women of the upper middle class, com 
 muters' wives especially, do not go often enough 
 to such festivities to acclimate ourselves to changes 
 from flannels to nothing, or to feel at home with 
 topless garments, and they are therefore among us
 
 206 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 an assumption, a vulgarity. Oh, the flaunting of 
 bare bones and leaf lard that father and I have seen 
 in the past when entertained by some of his "summer 
 resident " patients, whose culinary pretentious, by the 
 way, were very slight. None of these, however, had 
 the peculiar quality of flesh possessed by the " turtles," 
 a species of Englishwoman that Evan and I constantly 
 met and so classified age between fifty and seventy, 
 never the mother of sons, but of daughters, only 
 unmarried daughters, who evidently made their own 
 clothes with the neck openings all of the same meas 
 ure, irrespective of under or over development. 
 
 I've often wished when at some of the "profes 
 sional necessity " dinner parties, that less meat on 
 the hoof had been exhibited and more had been 
 cooked and served at table, instead of the eight 
 courses of spinklets that frequently separated the 
 very tough and altogether-too-large-to-be-eaten-raw 
 clams from the half cold, disintegrated coffee; but 
 such are the risks of society, and so we learned to 
 smile and say nothing ; but when we came home, we 
 always had a supper of honest roast beef sandwiches 
 and Bass's ale. It does sound vulgar, but it's so 
 comforting, and ale is quite safe when one is rather 
 tall, slender, and takes plenty of exercise.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 207 
 
 Alack! the divergences in my Garden Boke are 
 many, but this one explains why I can now conscien 
 tiously give way to the Terrible Temptation ; for to 
 keep Evan and the maids in good condition, I have 
 foresworn evening visiting for the cold months, and 
 so this evening is quite my own. 
 
 February n. Last night I attempted nothing 
 in the way of list making ; I simply explored my four 
 catalogues. 
 
 One was a dainty leaflet from Vermont, chiefly 
 exploiting hardy and native plants for the border, 
 wild and bog garden. Bog Garden ! I've an idea 
 that the wet spot around the spring hole by the cow- 
 path in the wood lot would make an enchanting 
 boggery. The soil ranges from water covered 
 through wet to merely damp, and could be easily 
 shaped, and the tussock grass grubbed out. Besides, 
 I see that this catalogue lists a great many plants of 
 wet ground that used to grow wild here, and that we 
 can dig up free of cost. 
 
 The next catalogue is from northern New York, 
 of fruits, shade trees, shrubs, and roses. I will put 
 this aside, with a sigh, however, for we have agreed 
 not to buy any more shrubs and roses until faUL when 
 we shall be quite sure where we wish to plant them. 
 
 The third is a substantial and conservative vol-
 
 208 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 ume devoted to seeds and a few well-tested bulbs 
 and roots. My grandfather bought his seeds from 
 this firm, and from this I shall make my final list 
 and send my order; and yet I turned almost fever 
 ishly to the fourth, the catalogue of adjectives and 
 gay lithographs, upon whose cover is pictured a 
 young and lovely lady (it would seem lacking in 
 gentility to call her a woman). With her left hand she 
 holds up her lace robe, showing high-heeled slippers, 
 with the other she pushes an improved mowing 
 machine, with which she has just completed cut 
 ting the grass on a two-acre lawn, though it is 
 apparently early morning. In the far background 
 is a bed of roses, each flower the size of the lady's 
 head ; and from the vegetable garden, which is in 
 plain sight, the husband, clad in a dress coat and 
 a four-in-hand tie, is taking in some strawberries of 
 large size for breakfast, apparently twelve to the 
 barrow in which he is wheeling them. 
 
 In spite of knowing that this is a Yellow Journal 
 of Horticulture, I fold back the cover and con 
 tinue the walk through a midsummer night's dream 
 of improbabilities, violets the size of a silver 
 dollar, pansies as big as saucers frilled like a 
 skirt dancer's robe, dwarf nasturtiums all flowers 
 and no leaves, self-supporting sweet peas, and worse
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 209 
 
 yet, a well-known weed with a showy orange-red 
 flower, hawkweed or devil's paintbrush, is recklessly 
 praised. The same being a perfect curse to agriculture 
 in the grass region is offered as a floral novelty, and 
 so on until, passing from flower to vegetable garden, 
 a tomato appears that requires a folded twelve-inch 
 plate to picture it, " three-quarters life size " ! 
 
 I still read on. The pictures are " all from 
 life," taken at the seed-testing ground. Ah, yes, but 
 please realize, Madam Commuter, that the seed-test 
 ing ground is not your garden, that the remarks 
 do not apply to you, and that it is easy to enlarge 
 photographs. Be thankful also that it is not your 
 garden ; for you would become blind with the glare 
 of colour, and gardening would be such a mechani 
 cal certainty that there would be no pleasure in it. 
 
 I know all this by bitter experience in the 
 days when plant money was tight. I have eaten 
 the wild apple, and yet return to the bitter fruit. 
 I have been burned, and yet poke the fire with 
 my fingers. I know that the coloured flower packets 
 at ten cents contain only as many seeds as the 
 plain ones of the conservative old firm do at five 
 cents, yet I reach for my pad and pencil, and find 
 myself wondering if possibly the Perpetual Bloom 
 ing Pekin Perfection Poppy offered, may not
 
 210 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 blpom for five months instead of, as usual, shrivel 
 ling and disappearing after a fortnight's tropic 
 glowing that necessitates sowing in succession. 
 
 No, the gambling spirit is strong in all agricul 
 turalists, and especially so in the commuter's wife, 
 ^when the vernal equinox approaches, and surely 
 Wall Street itself is not possessed of more wiles than 
 the Seed Catalogue. Even the offerings of the Plant 
 Catalogue are a government bond by comparison. 
 You buy your plant and at least it is tangible, but 
 the seeds are promissory notes which nature upon 
 occasion does not hesitate to repudiate. Still the 
 fascination remains, a charm born of optimistic 
 hope, of the same sort as is exercised by the 
 patent medicine, flesh-reducing, wrinkle-destroy 
 ing, and household washing-machine-without-work 
 advertisements. 
 
 February 15 (evening). St. Valentine's Day. No 
 birds mating as yet but English sparrows, which 
 never seem to be otherwise. It was my painful 
 duty to have three couples of them evicted from the 
 martins' house this morning. 
 
 Evan has just brought me a box of roses and car 
 nations from the city. The roses are all of the 
 fragrant and lovable kind, and the carnations are 
 great golden beauties with a rosy fringe. They made
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 211 
 
 a fine decoration for the dinner table, as my little 
 wild fernery is fading, and I must refill it at last with 
 some of my yellow tulips. I hope never to be too 
 poor to have something flowery on the table ; for eat 
 as daintily as we may, it is a very physical employ 
 ment, and flowers do much to divert our minds at 
 least, from foodiness. Next to the dining table, the 
 stand in the hall is my favourite place for a bouquet 
 or a plant in bloom. Here every one can enjoy their 
 beauty the patients bound for father's office, to 
 whom the visit should be made as cheerful as possi 
 ble; and the maids about their work as well as 
 we ourselves are cheered even though uncon 
 sciously. 
 
 Evan says when I am ready to make my bog 
 garden, which if I follow his advice will not be 
 this spring, I had better buy my plants instead of 
 despoiling our own streams and ponds of them. Also 
 that it will be quite as cheap if I credit the price of 
 the necessary labour and wear and tear against them. 
 As usual he is right, I think, for I remember several 
 years ago I tried to dig some rose mallows by the 
 river several miles away. I broke my trowel and 
 ruined a pair of shoes, and the next day when Tim 
 went for the mallows he brought the clump back in a 
 fine block of peat ; but unfortunately it held only the
 
 212 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 stems, the roots being somewhere between here 
 and China, so that it was a decided case of Plant 
 Labour Lost ! 
 
 It is always nice to have something ahead of one, 
 so I'm putting the bog garden idea away in my 
 desk, catalogue and all, together with that of the 
 shrubs and roses. That is to say, I'm only ordering 
 six crimson ramblers and fifty summer-blooming roses 
 for the sun garden, such as La France, Perle, 
 Augusta Victoria, Malmaison, Coquette de Lyon, 
 Duchess of Edinburgh, Souvenir d'un Ami, Sunset, 
 and Bride. These will give Evan a bud for his but 
 tonhole after the June roses have gone and before 
 the Margaret carnations grown from seed come in 
 bloom. 
 
 I'm also ordering a dozen or so packets of seeds 
 from the " Yellow Journal" catalogue, merely to settle 
 my mind and prove that they are humbugs. I now 
 have before me the catalogue of my ancestor's firm 
 that has weathered time and sensation ; so once 
 again heredity comes to my aid. 
 
 This catalogue I have read and reread many times 
 during the past five days, and I'm quite surprised to 
 find, among the hundreds of species of flower seeds 
 it offers, how comparatively few are needed for the 
 making of my garden, or would be missed by any but
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 213 
 
 the specialist or dealer who wishes to make a numer 
 ous showing, if they should entirely disappear from 
 the market. With the vegetables we discovered this 
 years ago, and acquired great caution in trying new 
 varieties. Evan also says that it is much the same 
 with the plants, trees, and shrubs used in producing 
 effects in everyday landscape architecture. 
 
 Of course all plants are suitable where they are 
 native born, many are adaptable to new conditions, 
 and many others are lovely, but of such a fleeting 
 quality of bloom that they are quite out of place in 
 a garden where space is in any way limited, so that 
 in spite of the trivial cost of the seed, they are an 
 extravagance because of the small yield of satisfac 
 tion in proportion to the soil they cover. 
 
 Most of these evanescent flowers flock under the 
 title of annuals ; and though many may yield masses 
 of gorgeous colour in July and August, they have 
 little or no part in the bloom of the earlier and later 
 season. 
 
 Last night, after I had revised my list for the third 
 time, the first lists would have stocked a ware 
 house, and recopied it, I showed it to Evan. 
 
 He looked rather cynical, made a rapid calculation 
 in which the quantities I had ordered and the square 
 feet seemed inextricably mixed, and then said,
 
 214 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Far be it from me to limit you, but at a moderate 
 estimate, allowing for the usual failures to sprout, 
 you are ordering enough seeds to sow two acres. 
 Where do you mean to plant them ? " 
 
 " Why, in the sun garden, of course," I stammered, 
 beginning to realize that the gardening possession is 
 like intoxication, for when under its influence you see 
 double, and not only do your flower beds increase in 
 number, but in size also. " You know we planned to 
 keep all the perishable summer flowers together there ; 
 that is, except the nasturtiums and sweet peas, which 
 of course must go either side of the long walk." 
 
 " With the quantities limited, the list is fairly con 
 servative," he continued, " but I see a dozen annuals 
 there that we surely have no room to waste upon, and 
 they will leave a bare spot early in September, if not 
 sooner. I do not expect that you will give them up 
 without a trial, nothing less will convince you, but 
 I'll lay you a wager of a new rose-arbour to nothing, 
 that their names will not be on your list next year," 
 and as he spoke, he checked off a name here and 
 there, adding a remark as if dismissing the plant for 
 good : 
 
 " Sweet alyssum : Only good for formal edgings." 
 
 " Amaranthus in mass : All too big and weedy for 
 a small garden."
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 215 
 
 " Castor beans : Too pretentious for your garden, 
 and not in character." 
 
 "Tassel flower (cacalia): 'Feebly inefficient. Be 
 longs to the days of little choice." 
 
 " Annual chrysanthemums : Turn to mush in a 
 rainy season and require as much care as bedding 
 plants." 
 
 " Gourds : Grotesque. Only fit for a child's gar 
 den, and they harbour squash bugs." 
 
 " Everlastings in variety : Belong to the days of 
 dried apples and herb tea. Not needed by those who 
 can buy fresh flowers in winter." 
 
 " Love in a mist : Trivial." 
 
 " Annual poppies : Either dry up or decay. Climate 
 too uncertain for the annual varieties, excepting fall- 
 sown Shirleys." 
 
 Until finally my list, chastened and much reduced, 
 is copied for the last time. Of annuals it has 
 asters in separate colours, Truffants, Victoria and 
 pompon; calendulas, coreopsis, centaurea or bluets, 
 cosmos, lobelia errecta, mignonette, climbing nastur 
 tiums, Japan pinks, portulacca, salvia splendens, 
 white " cut-and-come-again " stocks, sunflowers in va 
 riety, sweet peas, wall flowers of the annual dwarf 
 kind, verbenas of the mammoth tribe, evening prim 
 rose, nicotiana affinis, the white night-blooming
 
 216 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 tobacco, cheerful balsams, and zinnias in many 
 shades. 
 
 The perennial and biennial plants and bulbs of the 
 hardy borders we shall renew by seed or root division, 
 but the list of what were here already, or were set out 
 in November, is a brave one : peonies (colours un 
 known), phlox, columbines, Canterbury bells, fox 
 gloves, bleeding heart, white, yellow, and red day lilies, 
 Spanish, German, and Japan iris, honesty (lunaria), 
 golden glow rudbeckia, pyrethrum, oriental poppies, 
 hollyhocks, monkshood, anemone-Japonica, larkspurs 
 of all shades from white to deep metallic blue, hardy 
 white, pink, and red fringed pinks, lupins, evening prim 
 roses, bee balm, and hardy pompon chrysanthemums. 
 
 I have also here a list of roots and bedding plants 
 to stock the garden with, that I hope to keep from 
 year to year in a flower pit with a stove in it that 
 I have in mind if godmother's fifty pounds hold out ; 
 and I think they will, because Evan has been so 
 good and forgiven me a small sheaf of bills that I 
 expected to pay from it, so that it's only been sampled 
 as yet. These plants are heliotrope, scarlet and fra 
 grant geraniums, lemon verbenas, tender roses, chrys 
 anthemums, both Japanese and Chinese ; Dahlias 
 double, single, and cactus, and gladioli in plenty. 
 
 How long it will seem from the time my seed list
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 217 
 
 goes until the hotbed is ready for the planting ! 
 Middle March is quite early enough, because if you 
 begin sooner, unless you pot off the plants, they 
 grow too big, and are mashed when the sashes 
 are opened and closed. 
 
 I haven't shown Evan the list of things that I 
 ordered from the "Yellow Journal" catalogue, and 
 now he is over in father's study, where he has 
 politely gone to take a hand at whist, so I will 
 not disturb him. 
 
 Father wishes to interest the local clergy in the 
 hospital and have them all on the board, so that 
 the institution shall be unsectarian, but not irre 
 ligious, which is what that poor word often seems 
 interpreted to mean. I wonder how it will work ! 
 
 If sects could exist without bigotry, I think it 
 would be so much better than trying to abolish 
 them. As this is a material and not a spiritual 
 world, a certain amount of competition seems nec 
 essary to keep things going, so religion has got to 
 have a physical body and sex, so to speak, just the 
 same as people. Only cherubim and seraphim can 
 afford to do without either. 
 
 Three of the clergy dined here to-night, the 
 Roman Catholic, the Anglican Catholic (ours), and 
 the Severely Protestant.
 
 218 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 We had a very good dinner, that is always a 
 safe thing ; but if the Board meetings are to be 
 like the conversation, I'm afraid they won't do, for 
 there will be no food as a bond of sympathy. 
 
 The S. P. bubbled over with good fellowship of 
 the " dear sister in the faith " order, only he took 
 it that everybody else was of his opinion, and 
 didn't wait to see. He is a peculiar man and 
 religiously inconsistent, constantly doomed to de 
 plore his own actions. He has, like John Rogers, 
 nine children, which he uses alternately as flags of 
 triumph and alms basins. As it is spring, he waved 
 them vigorously at the R. C. : autumn, the time of new 
 shoes and flannels, is the alms-basin season. The 
 R. C. ate in comparative silence, watched, fed the 
 dogs quietly, and smiled. The A. C., really a 
 charming and cultivated man, felt himself between 
 two fires, and was so aggressively uncomfortable 
 that I did not know him. 
 
 One thing I feel, that if the R. C. goes on the 
 hospital board with that smile and his power of 
 holding his tongue well, it's not my affair, but I 
 shall advise father not to ask him. 
 
 The reason that Evan is over there playing 
 whist is because the S. P. doesn't believe in 
 cards, or at least says politely that he "can't
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 219 
 
 play." Blessed "can't" Neither can I. The card 
 cell was left out of my brain, or perhaps was early 
 absorbed by the gardening cell, which should lie 
 next door to it, both being games of chance. 
 
 My defect, however, has kept us from joining 
 the Hillside Social Whist Club, without giving 
 offence, because of course Evan isn't expected to 
 go without me, and for a person who can't play to 
 join a whist club of seasoned matrons and patrons 
 would be worse than for a blind man to go to a 
 pantomime. 
 
 Then permanent clubs that go on winter after 
 winter (I think Aunt Lot joined this one when I 
 was sixteen) are so well, so stupefying, to say 
 the least; and the supper is likely to be of what 
 Evan calls the surprise order, because you are sur 
 prised if you get any, and I'm so hungry if I sit up 
 after ten o'clock in winter. Then imagine voluntarily 
 leaving a tete-a-tete with Evan in a garden full of 
 books all in full bloom, not to mention seed cata 
 logues, for a whist party, even if you could play. 
 
 What do I hear ? The jingle of glasses, and 
 father's room is full of smoke, too. Evan is actually 
 offering the S. P. hot Scotch ! The wretch ! Has 
 he no tact? 
 
 Ah, the S. P. is taking it!
 
 220 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 Yes, of course, "a little for the stomach's sake," 
 etc. ; he has a cold, and father is prescribing it pro 
 fessionally. Wicked father ! All three have colds ! 
 
 The R. C. smiles and makes no apologies. He 
 seems a companionable sort of fellow, after all.
 
 XII 
 
 PLANTING 
 
 March 10. The snow is falling softly and stead 
 ily, as it did on that Saturday in December when 
 winter and the great storm came together. Earth 
 for the most part has been snugly blanketed ever 
 since, but during the last two weeks she has seemed 
 restless and thrown aside the covering, showing her 
 brown body here and there ; but as yet it is pulse 
 less and irresponsive. For even as human vitality is 
 at its lowest ebb in the early morning, so it is with 
 plant life in the early spring. 
 
 From the sense of sight alone it might still be a 
 midwinter afternoon, but the ear catches the spring 
 keynote. True, the winter birds, pine finch, cross 
 bills, and chickadees, are calling in the spruces, but 
 an occasional song mingles with their greetings, the 
 exquisite carol of the fox-sparrows beginning jubi 
 lantly and dropping to a swift close, and I know that 
 these are the first migrants feeding below in the field 
 where the wind has laid bare the seeded grasses.
 
 222 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Wonderful gift of the senses divided as well as 
 united for our use ! To the eye it is winter, to the 
 ear and the heart it is spring. 
 
 I have not written in my Garden Boke for a 
 fortnight, not since the night I completed my lists 
 of seeds. I have been away, away in my commuter's 
 city. 
 
 I did not care to go, and my Familiar Spirit and 
 I held heated arguments over the visit. Yet I 
 went. 
 
 I said, " Why should I go ? " 
 
 The Familiar replied, " Because you wish to." 
 
 " But I do not. I dislike the very idea." 
 
 " Then why consider it ? " 
 
 " Because I think it will do Evan good to have a 
 vacation from travel, and because I think that I 
 ought to go. He also thinks it will be good for me. 
 Because some dear old friends have invited us. 
 Because the time between seed buying and seed 
 planting is so long that I'm out of patience and in 
 danger of wearing holes in the seed packets by 
 fingering them." 
 
 " All good reasons, but the main one is that you 
 wish to go." 
 
 " I tell you that I dislike the city intensely." 
 
 " That may be, and yet you can like some of the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 223 
 
 things it has to offer. It is not well to decry the 
 source of supply. The money to support com 
 muters' wives is largely made in the city." 
 
 My Familiar Spirit can be exceedingly material 
 and disagreeable at times, so I pretended not to 
 hear, but continued, 
 
 " Of course there is music to be heard there just 
 now, and some paintings I wish to see, and if one 
 does not go to the city once in a time to really visit, 
 not to be a hotel mongrel, one is not able to eat or 
 shake hands in an up-to-date way with the summer 
 people on the bluff, or know what the queer new 
 table utensils are for. Though one doesn't care, at 
 the same time one likes to know." 
 
 " As I said, you wish to go" emphasized the 
 Familiar Spirit in an exasperating way, retiring 
 from the dialogue as if the final word had been 
 spoken. I should have explained, if my Familiar 
 Spirit had given me time, that the only real objec 
 tion I have to the city is born of the impossibility of 
 living there. As a great fair-ground, a place to 
 visit, it is satisfactory and seldom monotonous, for 
 you are quite sure never twice to find your 
 friends living in the same house or following the 
 same fads. You may be amused, then bored, then 
 have your wits sharpened or your nerves racked;
 
 224 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 meet friends gathered from the four corners of the 
 earth, or find the place as desolate as Siberia. You 
 may laugh and you may also cry. Yes, that is one 
 of the reasons why I could not stay in a city. 
 There is so much misery one must see and cannot 
 help, that it makes one feel small and shrivelled, 
 while hereabout there is no one so wretched but 
 what it is possible to aid him. You may, in short, 
 do everything in the city but live. I mean live your 
 own life, and not that of some particular clique, the 
 society of which, if you ignore, your loneliness will 
 be such that not the remotest dweller on the moun 
 tain side could compass or imagine it the desola 
 tion of a crowd ! 
 
 Then to be ill in the city ! I was ill, very ill there, the 
 winter that I was eighteen. It was in a good house, 
 and the people were kind. I lay there day after day, 
 and all that I could see of the sky was a little ragged 
 scrap between the tall house-tops. The sun never 
 crossed this gap, but sometimes at night I saw the 
 dogstar, and from the diffused light I knew that the 
 moon was up. I lay watching and pining more and 
 more until one night, when the moon at last crossed 
 my vista, it was a strange thing rent and divided 
 by overhanging wires, and Sirius himself seemed 
 only a lamp in the tallest building. As I looked, life
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 225 
 
 seemed to steal away from me, not leaving wholly 
 but keeping beyond my grasp, as it does when the 
 body lies long unconscious before death. 
 
 Then father, wholly comprehending, in spite of 
 risk carried me home, I never knew how, and when 
 I next looked out I saw the gray-limbed maples 
 framing sunset, and in that glow my life came back 
 to me. Now it occurs to me that father's study of 
 two imaginative, high-strung women at close range 
 has given him his wondrous insight into the sex 
 temperament, a knowledge that the mere technically 
 perfect scientist fails to compass. 
 
 I have been to the city, and the return fills me with 
 ecstasy. Here are some delights that the savage 
 misses from sheer lack of contrast, some phases of 
 civilization that are worth bearing temporarily for the 
 pleasure of the reaction. If one never went to the city, 
 one might not so keenly realize the country's potency, 
 just as it is well worth the trouble of wearing best 
 clothes occasionally, if merely for the pleasure of 
 taking them off. 
 
 I should have stored away the details of this visit 
 with the " general results " of the year, for after all 
 it was fairly comfortable as visits go, but the Fa- 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 miliar Spirit would ask somewhat impertinent ques 
 tions. 
 
 " Was Evan rested by the vacation ? " for like all 
 familiar things it calls us by our first names. 
 
 " He was amused and had an entire change of 
 scene, which is said to be the same thing," I an 
 swered laughingly. 
 
 " And you ? How about the handshake ? And 
 did you conquer the rotation of forks ? How are 
 they wearing soup plates, flat or deep ? " 
 
 " As there are two social schools, the old and the 
 new, I must confess to you, Familiar Spirit, the 
 handshake is in a chaotic condition and the soup 
 plates also. In two cases, however, what I took for 
 bonbon scoops proved to be soup spoons, dreadful 
 utensils for high-chested dowagers inclined to slobber, 
 as well as for mustached men. But then, mus- 
 tached men are under ban, and these scoops were 
 doubtless invented to complete their extermination. 
 However, I predict gold straws for soup sucking in 
 the near future, and Saxon beards should be due 
 next winter. Listen, Familiar Spirit, but do not 
 repeat ! In spite of all my watchfulness, at the most 
 formal dinner of my stay I lost count of weapons, 
 and when at the finish I had exhausted all but one, I 
 faced the problem of lifting rather soft ice-cream and
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 227 
 
 hot chocolate sauce with what to my benighted vision 
 seemed to be a silver toothpick ! A sub-butler finally 
 brought me an ice-cream fork, warm from the dish 
 water, greatly in contrast to his chilly glance. 
 
 " When I retrospected later, I discovered the spiked 
 tool was meant to unscale the artichokes, and 'twas 
 there I dropped the stitch. But tell it not, Familiar 
 Spirit, until you hear my excuse. My dinner partner 
 was the last of six who in two weeks' time had said, 
 'Don't you get jolly bored living in the country?' 
 as if they had rehearsed the words and tone in 
 chorus." 
 
 I never before formulated how crude and narrowly 
 cockneyfied the town life is here in the United 
 States until I went away. What English gentleman 
 would ask a country-living woman if her life bored 
 her? 
 
 Two weeks of this instead of the home-table talk, 
 and a weird entree constantly at your elbow in lieu of a 
 dog's soft nose ! And the after talk about who won 
 at " bridge " that afternoon, or whether it should be 
 Lakewood for the week-end, or if the husbands could 
 be coaxed as far as Aitkin. Think of it, instead 
 of listening to father and Evan's book arguments, 
 comfortably curled up in the ingle nook. Or if they 
 were silently busy, strolling about old London with
 
 228 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Leigh Hunt, spending an hour of mystery in the 
 Tower with Ainsworth, or, being in a frivolous mood, 
 donning a moral mask, the more discreetly to follow 
 Houssaye, a gentleman of Evan's introduction, into 
 the company of the Duke of Buckingham and 
 Madame Popeliniere. 
 
 Shakespeare was a sage for any and every day, 
 and our merry-making paper Puck chose a headline 
 that no one will dispute : " What fools these mortals 
 be!" 
 
 It is narrow for me to criticise the ways of these 
 women. They could not have my father for theirs 
 or be married to Evan, so what can be expected of 
 them ? It's a combination of sheer good luck and 
 stupidity that my sporting interests have gone to 
 horses, dogs, and garden, instead of to "bridge." 
 
 But worst of all to my country-bred body was the 
 two weeks of going late to bed wide awake and 
 vibrating, and of waking up dull and exhausted. 
 
 Ah ! the snow clouds have parted before the last 
 sunbeams, proving it March and not December. 
 One more walk amid the snow draperies that have 
 cheered the winter, and lingering here kept away 
 the only combination which the country dweller need
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 229 
 
 dread, a black March where frost and thaw 
 wrestle, and the result is misery and mud. 
 
 March 15. The Ides of March, of tragic memory, 
 have brought me snowdrops, which are the first 
 waking thought of the Garden of Dreams. I did 
 not expect them so soon. I was not searching for 
 them; I was standing in the sunshine by the Mother 
 Tree, looking at the wound made by the cutting of 
 a branch that the great storm had broken, when I 
 spied the snowdrops peeping from under the shelter 
 of the circular seat where Evan had planted them. 
 
 I could not bring myself to pick these, for they 
 seemed to belong to mother, but there were more 
 beside the path and nestled against the grass-bank 
 by the rose arbour, so I gathered some of them and 
 massed them with green moss in a frosted jar, a 
 spring greeting to the dinner table. Father has always 
 held that everything best and brightest of word or 
 thought or face ought to be gathered round this board, 
 considering it a sacred place from which all hurry and 
 trouble and dissension should be banished. 
 
 This afternoon I planted the flower seeds in the 
 hotbed, and the touch of the moist warm earth was 
 like a caress. It seems a very simple thing to do, 
 this planting, but it is not, for the adjustment of 
 depth and pressure to the size of seed requires in-
 
 230 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 telligent handling. If too deeply covered, they will 
 mould ; if too lightly, they will be washed out by 
 the slightest lack of judgment in sprinkling, and the 
 cry of the discouraged, " My seeds did not come up," 
 is the result. 
 
 The " general useful " may be exemplary, and in 
 all other respects " know a hawk from a handsaw," 
 but he cannot tend seeds in a hotbed. In his anx 
 iety lest they be thirsty or chilled, he waters too 
 much and hesitates to ventilate properly on pleasant 
 days. The result is that the seedlings either spindle 
 or suddenly disappear altogether, through the rav 
 ages of mould. In short, hotbed responsibility is 
 not to be transferred. 
 
 I must wear gloves in my gardening work, else I 
 may have knobs on my joints at forty. I allowed 
 myself the luxury of touching the soil to-day, for 
 my fingers are like the antennae of an insect, and 
 receive many a thrill of pleasure that would be insu 
 lated by gloves. Then, too, I seem to breathe partly 
 through my finger-tips. 
 
 I think it better to start all flower seeds in the hot 
 bed except half a dozen kinds that are grown en 
 masse, like sweet peas, nasturtiums, mignonette, nico- 
 tiana, bluets, convolvulus, or the untransplantable 
 sweet sultans and annual poppies. It is so much
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 231 
 
 easier to keep track of your colours and adjust the 
 plants themselves in the beds than to thin out seed 
 lings. Then, too, with our climate of droughts and 
 cloud-bursts, the growth of the more delicate seeds 
 is precarious. If one lacks a hotbed altogether, 
 much can be done in terra-cotta trays on the win 
 dow ledge. In fact, I've sown my Margaret carna 
 tion seeds in this way, for the hotbed does not give 
 them the cool air they need, and they are already up 
 and thrifty. 
 
 Under my eye Bertie has also sown some tender 
 vegetable seeds this afternoon, egg-plants, toma 
 toes, peppers, cauliflower, besides devoting a frame 
 each to early lettuce, radishes, and cucumbers. He 
 has a straight eye and a sense of proportion that 
 promise well for the neatness of the vegetable 
 garden. 
 
 March 20. The snow has retreated from the open 
 places, but still whitens the north side of fences and 
 shady places in the wild garden. The Christmas 
 ferns, polypody, and mosses, missing the frosty 
 moisture, are looking quite shabby. The cheerful 
 phoebe bird is here, and the redwing; and the cro 
 cuses that I planted in October are unfolding, the 
 golden yellow taking the lead. Early this morning a 
 prelude of the spring chorus floated up from the ever-
 
 232 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 greens, drawing me to the new window-seat. I 
 know that morning and evening will often find me 
 there in comfortable disarray, listening and gazing 
 through the vista of the trees. 
 
 The violets in the frame have done bravely all 
 winter, but now their stems are growing short and 
 the deep purple colour is paling. To-day Evan 
 had his first outdoor buttonhole flower, for snow 
 drops are too frail for wearing. It was a tiny 
 cluster of Daphne mezereum, nestling in its ever 
 green leaves, the earliest shrub to blossom, hold 
 ing the same place in the garden that the trailing 
 arbutus does among woodland flowers. 
 
 March 25. We have a new dog number six. 
 We did not buy him, but were made his guardians in 
 a way impossible to refuse. He is a most unique 
 animal, a real old dog Tray in looks, not years. 
 His name is The Orphan, and he looks it. His 
 coming was in this wise : 
 
 A few days ago a flagman on the branch railway 
 that runs northwest from town was hurt to death 
 by the derailing of a train. Father saw at once 
 that he could live but a few hours, and that freedom 
 from pain was all that he could give him. He 
 asked the man if there was any one he wished to 
 see, any little matter that he would like adjusted.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 233 
 
 At first the man seemed stunned, and did not 
 answer. Then he said : 
 
 " I'd like to see The Orphan, sir. There's no 
 body else that'll care. He's my dog. I guess 
 you'll find him in my flag-house behind the coal 
 box. That's where he lies of nights, if you care 
 to bother. I don't suppose you will, though," this 
 with a wistful glance, while a big tear rolled down 
 his cheek. 
 
 In half an hour or so the dog was brought, a 
 sombre creature, big and woolly, looking like a huge 
 Skye terrier. He gave a little whine of joy, licked 
 the poor man's hand, and crouched close to him. 
 
 " He's almost four years old. He was a freight 
 car ' left over ' when I got him as a pup. He'd be 
 good company to you if you happen to need a dog, 
 and he don't eat much. Else perhaps you'd give 
 him something a drug, you know. He's too retir 
 ing to make out foragin' for himself, and he ain't got 
 any friends but me. His looks was always up 
 against him." 
 
 "I have five dogs already," said father, "but I 
 will take him. No faithful dog is ill-looking to me." 
 
 So he arrived, sitting solemnly by father in the 
 gig, and Evan pronounced him an old-time English 
 sheep-dog, and well bred.
 
 234 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Strange to say, he has attached himself to Tim, 
 after fretting for a time and seeming ill at ease with 
 so much space to walk about in, and a whole horse 
 stall for a bed. And Tim, who only tolerates dogs in 
 a grudging sort of way, evidently returns the feeling. 
 To-day, hearing conversation in the stable, I thought 
 Bertie was there with Tim, but found only The 
 Orphan leaning against Tim's knees and licking his 
 fingers that were feeding him scraps of meat, while 
 Tim looked positively pleasant. 
 
 It doesn't so much matter what one loves. To 
 love is the transfiguring thing. 
 
 March 26. To-day I found hepaticas on the wood 
 edge, and the tiny white violets that bloom almost 
 before the leaves uncurl are perfuming a dozen sun 
 spots in the garden. It is not often that wild and 
 garden flowers may be combined and keep their attri 
 butes, but these two harmonize perfectly, and carry 
 indoors the elusive spirit of early spring. 
 
 April I. All Fools' Day. I have planted my sweet 
 peas, a pound's weight, in a long double row in the 
 new ground beyond the sun garden. The tall nas 
 turtiums will match them on the other side, making a 
 narrow alley of the walk where it meets the cow- 
 path to the wood lot. 
 
 The garden will have a trick played on its trustful-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 235 
 
 ness, I fear. A sharp, cold wind already rebuffs the 
 violets and makes me tremble lest we have laid bare 
 the hardy beds and uncapped the rose bushes too 
 soon. 
 
 In the hardy garden the Scylla and Charybdis of 
 springs lies between the keeping of things too warm 
 and uncovering prematurely. 
 
 April 10. A sullen week of hope deferred. Evan 
 has been on a little journey. How changed the 
 house is when the personality that pervades its every 
 corner is withdrawn ! Each one feels it, the maids 
 and dogs alike. Father even is restless, having come 
 from years of lacking it to lean on male companion 
 ship ; and I I fully understand why in old times, 
 when the knight went forth, his lady, feeling too 
 cross for general society, betook herself to a tower. 
 There she alternately gazed at and polished his 
 second best shield until trumpets sounding and the 
 drawbridge falling announced his return, when, rush 
 ing down, she fell into his embrace, unclasped his 
 armour, and kneeling, relieved him of his sword. 
 
 Of course now there is no drawbridge, the door 
 opens easily, the dogs replace the trumpets, and very 
 well do Bugle and Tally-ho imitate them. . Evan 
 sets down his suit case unassisted, but the embrace 
 remains and all the gladness.
 
 236 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 April 15. The first hyacinths, daffodils at their 
 height, and the Russian violets by the Mother Tree 
 a bed of glorious velvet bloom. 
 
 To-day we filled an alcove between two snowball 
 bushes in the bed of the long walk, thick with bud 
 ded pansy plants and tufts of English daisies. What 
 a delicate birch odour the pansies have ! 
 
 April. 1 8. Early tulips ablaze. All the narcissi 
 out except the polyanthus with its clustered blossoms, 
 and the poets, with the lovely pheasant's eye. The 
 hardy plants are now tufting the long beds with 
 many shades of green. Forsythia is in golden glory. 
 The scarlet quince at full, and the countryside white 
 and pink with peach and cherry blossoms. 
 
 May i. At last the Garden of Dreams has 
 awaked. It is ! After the healthful winter of snow 
 the whole land is a-bloom. All the bulbs are out 
 except the parrot tulips. Down by the spring hole 
 in the wild garden the marsh cowslips are heavy 
 with gold, and the same colour is swept across the 
 pastures by the dandelions. Is it not all my garden ? 
 All the cultivated and the wild, every flower and fern 
 in the wood and open as well, for not only what I 
 plant is mine, but also everything that I enjoy. And 
 the birds, too, do they not belong to me through the 
 loving of them ? Though they must not know it ;
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 237 
 
 even the thought of being possessed might mar 
 their liberty. 
 
 Evan found his primroses yesterday morning, one 
 tuft showing half a dozen blossoms. When I saw 
 his face as he called me to him, holding them in his 
 hand, I realized that after all it is the little things 
 of life that count, for the primrose was not only 
 precious in itself, but for all it stood for. 
 
 I was thinking this morning as I watched 
 the bluebirds flitting about their knot-hole in the 
 apple tree, heard the meadow-larks down in 
 the pasture, the flicker laughing in the wood lot, the 
 robins in the spruces, and the jolly song-sparrow 
 almost by my elbow, that the important garden 
 birds are like the flowers in number. How few com 
 paratively of the hundreds listed in the ornithologies 
 we can know well enough to call garden companions, 
 even if the residents of the wood lot and home woods 
 be counted in. 
 
 Many come and go, travelling beyond us. We hear 
 a strange note and see a flutter of unusual feathers. 
 We may call them by name ; but like the flowers 
 unsuited to the garden, they are not of our world. 
 A list of twenty-five would cover the confidentially 
 intimate, of fifty the really tangible. 
 
 Martha Corkle came to tell me mysteriously that
 
 238 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Tim has a cold, she is quite sure, because he has 
 taken off his flannels too soon, "which, Mrs. Evan, 
 is risky for a man of his years " (Tim must be up 
 ward of fifty), " and would you not kindly ask the 
 doctor that he cautions him ? " 
 
 I asked her why she does not speak to Tim her 
 self, as she has observed the cold and I have not, 
 and as a middle-aged widow she could certainly 
 mention flannels. 
 
 " Indeed, Mrs. Evan, I thought it more proper-like 
 to come from a married woman that is recent, so to 
 say, me being so long widowed is the same as not 
 being; and as for age, there's others older, ma'am. 
 The shape of those common bought flannels not 
 fittin' his leanin' figure might be at the bottom of 
 it. I bein' willin' to make up some more suitable 
 from always making Corkle's, if you'd but give me 
 the order so to do, Mrs. Evan." 
 
 After a moment the complicated sentences straight 
 ened themselves to my understanding, and I solemnly 
 said : 
 
 " Martha, could you oblige me by making some 
 spring flannels for Timothy Saunders if the doctor 
 prescribes them for him ? " Whereat the nearest 
 approach to a smile I had ever seen there crossed 
 her features, and she actually dropped an old-world
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 239 
 
 curtsy, saying, " I will, and thank you kindly," 
 becoming for the moment the comfortable English 
 countrywoman, instead of the hereditary servant out 
 of her class. Really there are human possibilities 
 in Martha. 
 
 May ii. I think there is a four-handed romance 
 brewing in the kitchen sitting room, the quartette 
 being Bertie and Delia, sober-minded Eliza and 
 Tim, who is perfectly unconscious that he is an 
 admired party. In the evening I hear laughter and 
 know that " hearts " and " forty-five " are being 
 played. I also know that Martha Corkle does not 
 approve, for I see her rigid shadow sitting apart, 
 taking no share, but bound to play the matron. 
 
 May 15. Colour is swathing the land again, lav 
 ish colour, the delicate whites, flesh, and pink of 
 apple blossoms, fleecy clouds of lilacs drifting from 
 the bank-wall before the house to the roadway, 
 pinxter flower on the hillside, along the wood road 
 blending with the white dogwood, and in the garden 
 lilies-of-the-valley. Truly does the flower language 
 translate their meaning as " Return of Happiness." 
 
 May 1 7. For two days we have picked and picked 
 the lilies, and yet there is no end. They will last the 
 month out if there is no heavy rain to make them 
 yellow. Evan has gone to town each day laden like
 
 240 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 a Maypole, the neighbours have had their share and 
 to-morrow I take a clothes-basket of little bouquets 
 to the hospital. 
 
 I think if we were to fall asleep for ten years, the 
 whole place would be overgrown with these lovely 
 flowers, the soil suits them so perfectly. 
 
 The resting time is over for garden and gardener. 
 All is push, excitement, and hurry, the relentless 
 hurry of growth. Every day something is planted, 
 some long-watched bud unfolded. After the twen 
 tieth it will be safe to move the seedlings from the 
 hotbeds and set out the bedding plants, geraniums, 
 heliotrope, and such-like that this year I've ordered 
 from a wholesale florist in town. 
 
 One and all we rush outdoors twenty times a day, 
 the dogs rebelling at the curbing of their liberty, 
 " Down ! charge ! " being the order of the season. 
 Bluff alone is discreet enough to be allowed within 
 garden bounds at planting time, and he has learned to 
 tread gently ; often he is meekly apologetic for 
 even overstepping on the grass border beside the 
 path. 
 
 The breakfast table is drawn into the bay window 
 looking toward the garden, and on balmy evenings 
 we take our after-dinner coffee under the Mother 
 Tree. Gardeners may not sit idly on the front
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 241 
 
 porch at evening daintily apparelled. This is the 
 best time for labour, the time to disappear from 
 view and, collarless and wrapped in a russet apron, 
 delve and grovel until dusk conceals one altogether. 
 
 For a woman, early morning is the time to gather 
 flowers, not to cultivate them. The gathering and 
 arranging brings their fragrance into one's life, but 
 weeding or kneeling among dewy plants, stooping 
 and moiling while the sun each moment blazes more 
 fiercely, is for the workman only. To the woman it 
 means fatigue before noon, and that sunken feeling 
 in the chest that whispers of indigestion or desire for 
 sodden sleep directly after luncheon. I have done 
 it and I know. 
 
 May 30. Decoration Day. Evan at home. The 
 garden is time-true, and yields deep crimson peonies, 
 white iris, and blue lupins to be blended together for 
 the soldiers' graves, as it did of old. The peonies, to 
 be sure, are not true red, but they at least complete 
 the symbol. 
 
 The hardy oriental poppies, scarlet with the black 
 eye, are fast unfurling from their green coverings, 
 and the long bed that we left all of a jumble is 
 bright with iris of many hues white, violet, purple, 
 wine-red, yellow, and variegated; in fact, the long 
 strip is a perfect iris rainbow.
 
 242 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 This morning we planted the seven raying beds 
 around the sundial. Evan conceived the idea of 
 matching them as nearly as possible with the colours 
 of the solar spectrum. These are red, yellow, green, 
 blue, and purple, with the intermediate shades. The 
 difficulty is to get the various colours in flowers of 
 even growth. We found all of the shades but blue 
 among the double zinnias, a family of sturdy growth 
 and willing bloom, crimson, scarlet, yellow, orange, 
 lilac, and purple. For the blue we chose the rich 
 metallic cornflower (or centaurea), Emperor William, 
 the grass between the rays giving abundance of green. 
 Of course this combination is a lottery. The wheel 
 may be either gorgeous or hideous, for there is but a 
 step between. It is such experiments as this, how 
 ever, that keep the gardener alert. Yet there are 
 people who are surprised if one is not bored by 
 living in the country! 
 
 May 31. The first garden tragedy. Alas, that 
 Evan should be the victim ! This morning when 
 he was picking a few last sprays of lily-of-the-valley, 
 his commutation ticket slid from his vest pocket 
 unobserved and lodged among the leaves, where it 
 hid until I discovered it in the afternoon. Not only 
 did he have to pay his fare to town and back again 
 at night, but he had no ticket to exchange for the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 243 
 
 next month's issue. The pathos of this tragedy 
 cannot be writ in words. Its inwardness is ethical 
 and not financial, and to be appreciated only by the 
 commuter and his wife 1
 
 XIII 
 JUNE 
 
 OLD ROSES WORTH GROWING 
 
 June 8. The first rose, only the frail, briery, 
 Harrison's yellow that came overseas in 1830 and still 
 lingers in old gardens, but a June rose nevertheless. 
 
 The garden of the long walk is all aflame with 
 the oriental poppies, and the fall planted Shirleys, as 
 if kindled by them, are carrying the fire line quite 
 down to the sun garden, the deep red colour paling 
 through all shades of scarlet, rose, and pink to blush- 
 edged white. The poppy though brief of days is the 
 garden hypnotist. Look steadily at a mass of these 
 glowing flowers blending their multicolours in the full 
 sunlight. At first their brilliancy is blinding ; then 
 as the petals undulate on the slender stems, your 
 attention is riveted as if a hundred eyes returned 
 your gaze, and drowsiness steals over you, for each 
 flower bears the spell of the hypnotic pod, whose 
 seeds bring sleep. 
 
 244
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 245 
 
 " Why does the pine tree moan ? " asked the 
 poppy. 
 
 " It does not," answered the grass that crept 
 about the pine's roots. "That is its way of 
 breathing." 
 
 " I make oblivion," said the poppy. 
 
 "And I, love," said the rose. 
 
 " Are they not both the same ? " asked the tall 
 white pine, stooping to shake the dew from its slender 
 fingers. 
 
 In these days the morning scent lies heavy, and 
 even the grass yields it. The mixed grasses of the 
 early meadows are more fragrant than the later. 
 The perfume of the vanilla grass is ravishing, while 
 the stiff, stark timothy seems more like straw. Now 
 among the outdoor sounds, bird music at its height 
 and the babbling notes of the early nestlings, comes 
 a new tone, the voice of the lawn mower. If you 
 listen to it sympathetically, you will find it has a 
 various vocabulary and that its moods may be easily 
 interpreted by the human ear. 
 
 If the grass is of the right height and condition 
 for the cutting, then is the machine happy, cheerfully 
 talkative, easily garrulous. If, however, the turf is
 
 246 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 overlong and wet, the accents are thick and choked 
 as if its throat needed clearing. If one wheel is on 
 the narrow border and the other on the walk, there is 
 a rasp of protest and a complaining tone denoting a 
 limping gait; while if the machine is banged heed 
 lessly against tree trunk or porch steps, recoil both 
 mental and physical is suggested by the angry growl 
 and whirr. 
 
 All garden tools have speech if the ear is keyed to 
 hear it. The shove-hoe working on the gravel path 
 can voice whether it is seriously searching out weeds 
 or merely shuffling irresponsibly about. And the 
 same tale is told by the common hoe in the corn 
 fields. 
 
 The garden history of June would still be in many 
 volumes if there were no roses, but as it is, all else 
 must give place to the head of a family that also 
 yields us strawberry, peach, pear, plum, apple, and 
 many of the most useful shrubs. 
 
 The scarlet poppies of early June introduce a 
 colour that seems to belong with the flowers of mid 
 summer and appears out of place among the more 
 delicate hues of the early garden even as the scarlet 
 tulip looks gaudy in contrast with the narcissi and 
 iris, though perhaps for well blended richness the 
 hardy flowers of June will match those of any season.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 247 
 
 The larkspurs ranging from white through sky and 
 mazarine blue to a metallic purple; Canterbury bells 
 of a fine porcelain opaqueness, white, lilac, rose, and 
 purple ; columbines of every solid colour and the 
 white-lined varieties, too, that suggest the fairylike 
 blossoms wrought by skilful glass blowers ; lemon- 
 yellow day lilies that make a brave showing against 
 a background of copper beech branches ; peonies 
 like great roses, beginning in May with the crimson 
 Jacqueminot colour; spires of old-world foxglove, 
 four feet tall, swaying above the golden glow of 
 hardy coreopsis ; and mats of sweet William, white, 
 pink, crimson, pheasant's eye, and harlequin, that 
 crowd the fringed clove pinks almost out of the bor 
 der. Then, too, there is a day edition of the yellow 
 evening primrose, and honesty (lunaria), the herb of 
 magic, in three tints, white, lavender, and purple. 
 
 All these flowers are of course improved by fre 
 quent resowing and resetting, and by having ample 
 elbow room, and yet nowhere do they seem so 
 typical, so gracefully lovable, and so wholly what 
 hardy folk should be, as in the bit of the old bor 
 der that we have not yet disciplined, where the 
 soil is completely hidden by a tangle of poppies, 
 sweet William, and foxgloves. 
 
 A book of praise might be written to hardy
 
 248 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 shrubs. June may claim many that in late seasons 
 overflow from May, the newer lilacs (though they 
 are never so satisfactory as the old, that, straggling 
 into the hedges may be gathered by the armful), 
 spireas, snowballs, Carolina alspice and syringas, 
 while Deutzia, hydrangea, and althea carry the shrub 
 flowers well on toward autumn. 
 
 Few things are so permanently satisfactory about 
 the home acres as shrubs; and the commuter's wife 
 may find refuge, likewise her table decorations, 
 in them when mischance overtakes more delicate 
 flowers. 
 
 " Shrubs are an awful bother to trim, aren't 
 they ? " said the Lady of the Italian Garden yester 
 day, on making the first call after her summer 
 entry at The Bluffs, and professing astonishment 
 at the number of our pickable flowers. 
 
 "We set out a lot two years ago," she continued, 
 " and certainly should have flowers this spring, but 
 you see the fault all lies in the trimming. The 
 landscapist that started us off said of course the 
 gardener would know which ones had to be trimmed 
 in the spring and which at midsummer. But it 
 seems he got mixed, and balled the thing up, so 
 the first year there was not so much as a sprig of 
 bloom, and hardly a leaf.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 249 
 
 " Last fall, when we hired your Chris as second 
 gardener for the outdoor things, I particularly 
 charged him to find out which was which, and re 
 member it. Instead, to make things sure, he has 
 shaved 'em off all alike, round as cheeses and the 
 twigs as short as my French poodle's hair when 
 he's clipped for summer. Yes, my dear, not a bud 
 left on the rhododendrons, two hundred bushes of 
 them arranged with rocks behind to make a ravine 
 effect on the left side of our lawn by the grand 
 drive. All connected, too, for lighting 'em with 
 electrics. It is simply maddening. Jenks-Smith 
 has just bounced him, and we've got to fill in the 
 ravine with cannas and coleus. The landscapist was 
 up yesterday, fifty dollars every time he comes, 
 and he was shocked, and says the scheme is wholly 
 inconsistent. But what can we do ? 
 
 " Perhaps your husband would come over some 
 evening and suggest something, not in the way of 
 business, just an informal call, you know, for 
 those poor clipped things look like left-over Christ 
 mas greens. How do you manage your pruning 
 now?" 
 
 I smiled internally as I thought of Chris, and told 
 her that the old shrubs had largely taken care of 
 themselves, except for a little shortening of strag-
 
 250 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 gling branches and cutting out of the old wood as 
 fresh growth replaced it, and we expected that the 
 new shrubs would do likewise. 
 
 Then, too, I said that we do like father's old 
 woman patient over on the charcoal hill. She had 
 only six shrubs, and yet her little dooryard seemed 
 overflowing with bloom. When people stopped to 
 ask how she pruned to get so many blossoms, she 
 answered, " Prune ? Pickin' constant and givin' 
 away, is the naturalest sort o' prunin', I reckon." 
 
 Of course Mrs. Jenks-Smith did not believe me, 
 however. 
 
 " I know very well that you've got some secret 
 about gardening that you won't tell." 
 
 " You are partly right," I assented wearily. " Yes, 
 there is a secret, but I'll tell it to you willingly, 
 and in it also lies the reason why we let Chris go. 
 ' First, be sure what you want, and then do it your 
 self, or at least see it done.' " 
 
 " Is that a rebus ? " queried Mrs. Jenks-Smith, 
 wrinkling her brows. "Ah, yes, I understand. 
 But, my dear woman, it's impossible ! Me stand 
 out in the sun ! Me cut flowers to give away ! 
 It would ruin my social position. Then the mani 
 cure says that arranging flowers is so bad for the 
 fingers and greens the nails, and that I shouldn't
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 251 
 
 even do that, for I must have good hands; I've got 
 so many new rings, you know. Jenks-Smith gives 
 me one every time he makes a coup." 
 
 June 10. The Fuchsias that I planted two weeks 
 ago in the shady corner between the end of the 
 rose arbour and the bank are doing finely. I wonder 
 why this flower is so neglected. True, the country 
 women often cherish a plant or two on the porch 
 in company with the oleander, night-blooming cactus, 
 and tub of amarylis. It is also used in filling window 
 boxes, but it has almost wholly departed from the 
 gardens. Fuchsias when well grown and trained 
 against a wire screen are not only one of the most 
 graceful and decorative outdoor plants, but when 
 gathered on long sprays and arranged either in vases 
 or laid on a white cloth as a table decoration seem 
 fairly to drape themselves under one's fingers. The 
 plants also are easy to keep from year to year in a 
 light cellar or flower pit, and by cutting them back 
 in spring, they make vigorous and almost vinelike 
 growth. Storm King, Elm City, Surprise, and Mrs. 
 Marshall are among the best, fairly covering them 
 selves with scarlet, magenta, or rose and white 
 flowers.
 
 252 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 I gathered the first real bouquet of roses this morn 
 ing, splendid Jacqueminots, a few clear pink Anne 
 de Diesbachs, and half a dozen moss buds and heavy 
 tinted leaves from a bush that was very old even 
 when father bought the place, and being ungrafted 
 and on its own root has kept perpetual youth by aid 
 of new suckers. It is always best when possible to 
 plant ungrafted roses. Our seasons are so variable 
 that in spite of covering, all but the sturdiest bushes 
 are liable to die down below the graft; flowerless 
 briers spring up undiscovered, so that the untutored 
 may cherish them a whole season. 
 
 Of course no other flower can compete with the 
 rose, except perhaps the carnation ; that, owing to its 
 qualities of endurance and fragrance, rich vivid or 
 delicate colouring, is almost an equal. The green 
 house rose and the rose of the American garden are 
 almost two different flowers, however. Of course, in 
 England, with its humidity that always veils even 
 though it does not obscure the sun's intensity, the 
 outdoor conditions are more even and like those of 
 a greenhouse. There the roses even of cottage 
 gardens are perfect, thick fleshed, and sturdy, while 
 the climate allows Gloire de Dijon and Marechal Neil 
 to festoon second story windows unchecked, in com 
 pany with white jasmine ; and Marie Van Houtte, a 
 tea rose, grows to the size of a great lilac bush.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 253 
 
 Those who plant their rose garden with the 
 memory of English roses blending with their dreams 
 must be disappointed, as well as those who read 
 the English garden papers telling of gathering La 
 France buds outdoors in January, and then start 
 out thinking to do likewise by buying the latest 
 offerings of the " Yellow Journal " catalogues. 
 
 Of course the new bushes that we set out last 
 fall will only show their colours and yield a few 
 tardy buds this June, and it takes at least a two 
 years' trial of a bush to prove its hardiness, colour, 
 fragrance, and vigour of growth. But my present 
 hope is in the old bushes that are proven, and as 
 they bloom, I shall make a list of them to give 
 to my friends who have small gardens and are 
 always asking for the names of roses that are "not 
 cranky." 
 
 Some of these bushes are old settlers, like the 
 white moss, Harrison's yellow, the nameless wine- 
 coloured rose of many petals, and Madame Plan- 
 tier, the bush that Dan'l gave me so long ago, now 
 grown a huge shrub, while its children trained as 
 vines are mingling on the rose arbour with Balti 
 more Belle, climbing Victor Verdier, and the shell- 
 pink, thornless blush rose, also an old-time favour 
 ite in English gardens. Some of the others are of
 
 254 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 later fame, though all have borne the test of at 
 least a score of years, the original growth renew 
 ing itself from the root, and one and all are faith 
 ful, satisfactory bloomers, asking only deep, rich soil, 
 a shelter of cedar boughs in winter, a light April 
 pruning, and two sprayings with weak whale oil soap 
 suds before the buds show colour, while in return 
 they will yield armsful, apronsful, yes, clothes- 
 basketsful, of roses. 
 
 June 14. Saturday. This morning as I was 
 pottering among the roses, making ready for the 
 June festival now beginning, by tying up a branch 
 here and there, and seeing that the bushes were 
 well supported in case heavy showers should come 
 when the bloom was at its height, I heard a babel 
 of voices that seemed to come from the wood lot 
 in the direction of the wild walk. 
 
 I hastened down there because we have already 
 transplanted many ferns and wild plants to the 
 edge of the path, and the trees and bushes are 
 full of nesting birds that I knew of old used to 
 attract unregenerate school children on egg hunts 
 bent, so that either father or Tim had been fre 
 quently obliged to patrol the place on Saturdays 
 in May and June. 
 
 Guided by the voices, I soon came upon a group
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 255 
 
 of perhaps a dozen females standing about a stunted 
 maple, gesticulating wildly. At the moment I 
 appeared, as if obeying a signal, they sank to the 
 ground in unison like a band of conspirators on the 
 stage, and there remained squatting uncomfortably, 
 the grass being deep and soaking wet, while they 
 gazed at the maple. 
 
 For a moment I was nonplussed. The women 
 ranged from youngish to middle aged, the chief 
 conspirator (I judged her to be the chief because she 
 stood up and pointed, though not with a dagger) was 
 perhaps fifty ; tall, lean, thin in the legs and hair, 
 but wearing an untrimmed sailor hat, and a very 
 short divided bicycle skirt. She carried a book and 
 an opera glass, while a luncheon box was hung over 
 one shoulder. Then I saw that all the others were 
 equipped in a similar manner. As I went forward 
 to warn them away, I heard the voice of the chief 
 say : 
 
 " Ladies, in that tree is the clay-lined nest of a 
 wood thrush. The mother-bird is now brooding. In 
 a few moments, when you have observed her patient 
 immobility, I will see whether the nest contains eggs 
 or young birds ; if the latter, we may hope to observe 
 the method of feeding and home sanitation practised 
 by our feathered little sister in the bush."
 
 256 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Not while Barbara and six dogs are on the prem 
 ises," I thought. Then the whole thing flashed 
 across my intelligence. The conspirators were doing 
 a Cook's Tour in Birdland ! For a moment I ex 
 pected to see the group arise solemnly, take hands 
 and dance around the chief, singing : " Follow the 
 man from Cook's," then I took action, steadying my 
 voice, and using father's pacific formula for such 
 cases. 
 
 " You probably are not aware that you are tres 
 passing, but this is private ground," my voice becom 
 ing more emphatic as I saw that the thrush had left 
 the nest, and was summoning assistance by means of 
 her cluck of alarm, which was instantly answered by 
 the nearby robins' " quick, quick," the veery's 
 " whew " from the woods, the catbird's " miou " 
 from the garden, as well as a chorus of others. 
 
 " Oh, not at all, not at all," said the chief, beaming 
 upon me patronizingly. " That is, I mean we are not 
 in any way trespassing. We are studying birds a 
 Bird Class, you know. Of course I was aware that 
 this land belongs to the doctor, and that is the very 
 reason why I have chosen it as the meeting place 
 for my class for the next two weeks, as I hear that he 
 has protected birds for a long period, so that more 
 species can be found nesting in a small radius than in
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 257 
 
 any place conveniently near town. This fact guided 
 my choice, for we've quite exhausted the city park ; 
 and later on we are going into the deep woods to 
 observe the moulting, and to differentiate the plu 
 mage of young and adult birds. Ladies, look quickly ! 
 the female wood thrush is just above your heads, giv 
 ing a tender maternal call to attract the attention of 
 her young. Observe her smaller size, and the differ 
 ence in the breast marks." 
 
 "That is not a female wood thrush," I asserted 
 boldly. " It is a veery that has come up from the 
 spring to help the wood thrush drive away intruders. 
 If you were a red squirrel or a garter snake, you 
 would get a good pecking, I can tell you; but as 
 you are a human being, the thrush asks me to tell 
 you to go away, and not come back." 
 
 " Really, this is most extraordinary ! " gasped the 
 chief. " Do you take no interest in bird study ? 
 This is the only method of learning their normal 
 habits. Perhaps you would like to join my class. 
 It might open a new vista before your unseeing eyes. 
 I would take you at half rates if you are connected 
 with the doctor's household." 
 
 My patience vanished. Ah, for a tomahawk to 
 hurl ! Lacking that, I used words. 
 
 " One moment, if you please, before you leave. I 
 s
 
 258 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 am Barbara, the doctor's daughter, and I know the 
 birds in this field and these woods as well as I do the 
 fingers on my hands. So well do I know them that 
 I will not have them worried, or their privacy 
 invaded. Even if I did not object, it is useless for 
 you to go about in a mob to try to learn a thing 
 about them ; for, so surrounded, not one of their 
 actions would be normal. Two, even, is a crowd, 
 if you wish to learn the ways of birds. How would 
 you like to have a party of ten or a dozen people 
 camp outside the window of your bath-room to 
 ' observe ' you ? Would your actions be normal and 
 unflurried ? " 
 
 One of the young girls giggled, but still the chief 
 would not retreat, and tried suavity. 
 
 " This is the new method of ' naming birds without 
 a gun,' my child, instead of shooting the poor little 
 things, to learn their names as wicked scientific men 
 do." 
 
 " But even you haven't learned their names rightly 
 it seems ; so how can you teach these others ? And 
 I'm sure it's no worse to kill a few outright to be 
 object lessons to hundreds in a museum, than to 
 shatter the nerves of entire families, and addle 
 unhatched eggs, as you are doing. Now I think I 
 know why my pair of mourning doves deserted their
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 259 
 
 nest over in the pines last week. You've been 
 observing them, too ! " 
 
 The chief actually blushed, stammered, then led 
 the retreat, which was made the more rapidly, as at 
 that moment Bluff, Lark, and the hounds, having 
 found my trail, nosed me out, and though naturally 
 most polite dogs, something about the conspirators 
 jarred upon them, and they said all the things that I 
 could not say. 
 
 In the afternoon, in driving along the wood road 
 with father, I came upon the party crouching by the 
 wayside and evidently endeavouring to identify a 
 large round nest well up in an oak tree by aid 
 of a coloured picture book of birds' nests. I do not 
 think they were successful because the nest hap 
 pened to be the old winter home of a gray squirrel ! 
 
 June 15. Rose Sunday. A gentle shower last 
 night, together with a warm, hazy morning, has 
 unloosened hundreds of buds, and the Rose Festival 
 is now open. For two weeks at least we shall think 
 and almost eat and drink roses. Nothing rare or 
 wonderful, or large ; merely plenty of good, healthy, 
 old-fashioned roses, the only kind worth growing in 
 the garden of the commuter's wife. 
 
 I gathered four bouquets from the great bushes this 
 morning, one for the table, one for church, one for
 
 260 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 father's desk in the study, and one for Martha 
 Corkle, whom I found down in the garden before 
 breakfast, gazing at the flowers in a state of pensive 
 admiration. Martha has not had her usual spring 
 and snap of late. I've been afraid the climate is too 
 hot for her, and I was glad to have a chance to speak 
 with her, out of doors. 
 
 " No, Mrs. Evan, I can't say as I do feel natural 
 like. Some'ats come over me, and no disrespect 
 intended, I think it's the beer, Mrs. Evan, or, I should 
 say, the want o' it." 
 
 " What ! beer ? " I asked in alarm, visions of the 
 stately Martha overcome by drink rising before me. 
 
 " Maybe you never knew or else disremember, 
 Mrs. Evan, that in the old country we all had our 
 allowance of ale or 'ome-brewed, the same which is 
 meat and drink to the stomach, Mrs. Evan, mine as 
 being house-keeper never being less than eight pints 
 the week. Not that I blame you, Mrs. Evan ; for how 
 can the lady give out beer for one in a 'ouse that would 
 upset another, Mrs. Evan, and I'd not take the 
 responsibility of seem' it served to Delia, she bein' 
 Irish and so hot-headed ; and Eliza would take it to 
 heart sore, she thinkin' all beers and liquors the Devil's 
 dish-water, though she bein' herself one of the white 
 cheese breed of women that a drop o' beer would
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 261 
 
 hearten. I've thought it over, Mrs. Evan, and I don't 
 see the way clear to it, bein' the fault o' mixed races, 
 and not yours, mum. For that matter, Timothy Saun- 
 ders he says there isn't any 'ome-brewed to be got 
 over here, the same bein' thin and watery, and I do 
 claim there's no such thing for making one feel 
 respect for the stomach as 'ome-brewed along with a 
 lean cut o' beef." 
 
 Neither could I see the way, and I could under 
 stand her craving, though I had not before thought 
 of the omission. Beer dealt out in the kitchen of a 
 New England physician ! and Martha was not one 
 to take it secretly. Irrespective of the Village Liar 
 and the Emporium, such a thing was not to be con 
 sidered. Poor Martha, as well as the sundial, it 
 seems, is the victim of changed conditions. 
 
 I turned the talk to the roses and gave her a 
 bouquet for the blue and white ginger jar that she 
 keeps for stray posies on the sill of the long window 
 above the kitchen table, and promised her a row of 
 geraniums to fill the shelf, a frilled curtain for the 
 top, and a canary, things that made the Somerset 
 kitchen so quaintly attractive ; for stiff as Martha is, 
 she is not ashamed of loving flowers, in fact, such an 
 idea would never occur to her. Still, I'm afraid that 
 they will not be as " heartening " as the home-brewed.
 
 262 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 I think this is a matter that I may bring before 
 Evan without breaking my vow of never talking 
 servants. 
 
 June 1 8. Evan says the beer question will adjust 
 itself. Blessed faith of man ! But then, I've ob 
 served things generally do, if not scattered and 
 tossed about by argument like thistle balls in a gale. 
 
 I spend several hours every day now in arrang 
 ing my flowers, for outdoor roses are blooms of a 
 day that need frequent renewal. I have a special 
 shelf in the pantry for this work, the tool house 
 being overcrowded. I am also now realizing the 
 benefits of a large supply of flower holders of 
 various shapes and sizes. Not only have I inherited 
 a whole family of blue and white bowls, the most 
 fascinating receptacles for short-stemmed garden 
 roses, and two darling India jars that belonged to 
 father's mother, as well as some pieces of fine cut 
 glass ; but friends knew my foible, and my wedding 
 gifts ran to vases, instead of coffee spoons and 
 pie knives ; while Evan has given me half a 
 dozen inexpensive jars of a fine shade of dull 
 green glass for holding heavy, long-stemmed flowers, 
 like peonies, hollyhocks, and lilies. 
 
 The honeysuckles that wall the long walk on 
 the northwest and drape the windows and porch
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 263 
 
 are in bloom, and the humming-birds only leave 
 the feast the long-tubed flowers offer when dusk 
 and the hawk moths appear together. 
 
 Is there anything more intoxicating than a great 
 bowl of pink, red, and white roses that have been 
 picked before the dew dries, all fringed and 
 wreathed with honeysuckle? They go to my head 
 as wine might, and when I bury my face in them 
 I feel moved to dance and sing like a bacchante. 
 I am a pagan these days, dazzled with colour, 
 moved by sensations not logic, and ruled by the 
 god Outdoors. Father says, however, that I am 
 not a pagan at heart, but a Christian pantheist like 
 himself, and moreover affirms it to be the most 
 wholesome and sane of beliefs. 
 
 Evan carries a bouquet of roses to town daily, 
 the name of Maypole which he acquired in lily- 
 of-the-valley time still adhering to him. Some of 
 the other commuters, hoi polloi with crumby chins 
 and egg on their mustaches, cannot understand 
 what a man, full grown, broad shouldered, and six 
 feet in height, without symptoms of softening of 
 the brain, should want with a perpetual bouquet. 
 The man in question, considering it purely his own 
 business, does not enlighten them by saying that 
 he cares so much about having flowers on his
 
 264 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 office table that he carries them gladly, and there 
 fore is called eccentric. 
 
 I have always noticed that when people consider 
 others eccentric, it is because they are revelling in 
 some form of enjoyment that their critics can neither 
 compass nor share, and there are no people so devoid 
 of nature sentiment as the rank and file of commer 
 cial American males. 
 
 June 20. Roses, and more roses ! The arbour 
 vines are rich with colour. I am almost glad that 
 roses do not last all summer; they are so strenu 
 ous, they demand the best of everything, food 
 lodging, care, and I should be worn out also with 
 the prolonged luxury of the revel. 
 
 The sweet peas are beginning to fringe the trellis 
 top, and bow and blush to the nasturtiums opposite, 
 all swaying to and fro in a line on either side the 
 path as if taking sides in the country-dance that fol 
 lows the minuet of the courtly roses, and marks the 
 entry of the glowing, less aristocratic summer flowers 
 of July and August. 
 
 ****** 
 
 I've been watching a pair of song sparrows for two 
 weeks past, and have arrived at the conclusion that
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 265 
 
 there are birds of defective judgment as well as 
 people. This couple evidently were either young 
 and undecided, or for some other reason late in 
 mating, and they did not build their nest between the 
 roots of a shmb or in a sturdy bush as well-conducted 
 song sparrows should do, but balanced it almost 
 at the end of a branch of a rose bush that would 
 surely bend over as the roses opened and grew heavy. 
 To-day the inevitable happened. A shower bent the 
 bush, and the eggs rolled out and were broken. I 
 reproach myself, for I should have tried to prop up 
 the nest, but I thought that they knew their business. 
 However, it is only June, and it may teach them to 
 plan better next time. 
 
 June 30. The hardy border roses are practically 
 over, a great storm last night having scattered the 
 ripened bloom upon the ground in a foam of red, 
 white, and rose-coloured petals. The arbour has not 
 yet reached perfection, and the summer roses in the 
 four corner beds of the sun garden are sending up 
 strong shoots set thick with buds. 
 
 We have made our list of satisfactory hardy, 
 fragrant roses that we have tested up to date. I will 
 write it in my Garden Boke so that I may not for 
 get when people ask me about them. Some of the 
 bushes are now too old and woody to yield large
 
 266 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 flowers, but we shall simply renew them in kind, and 
 avoid experiments as far as possible. A hundred of 
 such bushes are all that a woman gardener, even 
 with a wide ambition, can manage either to plant, 
 suitably care for, or to gather and give away the 
 flower crop, while fifty will yield almost equal joy. 
 Of white we have Madame Plantier, Bath Moss, 
 Coquettes des Blanches, and Coquette des Alpes ; 
 pink Centifclia, the hundred-leaved Provence 
 Rose, Magna Charta, Anne de Diesbach, Paul 
 Neyron (the child of Anne de Diesbach and Victor 
 Verdier), and La Reine ; dark red Baron de 
 Bonstettin, Duke of Albany, Camille de Rohan ; 
 deep bright crimson Alfred Colomb, Jacqueminot, 
 Fischer Holmes, and Marie Bauman. Of the mosses, 
 both the common and crested. 
 
 These roses grown outdoors of course must have 
 shorter stems, and fade and drop their petals sooner 
 than their indoor brothers. Others may have finer, 
 and the Italian garden on The Bluffs disports two 
 thousand rose trees, but these are my very own to 
 love and gather and give away; their faults, even, 
 are born of the shortcomings of the climate of my 
 own country. In short, they are my children, and 
 therefore none others can be so lovable. 
 
 Late this af ternoc n a young coloured girl of a very
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 267 
 
 humble family came to the door and asked for me. 
 Her sister is to be married to-night, and she came all 
 a-giggle to beg a bouquet for " de bride. Roses, an' 
 horse-hair ferns, an' you please, missis ; dem's what 
 de quality most allers carries." 
 
 I took my scissors and was about to gather a gay 
 bunch of the brightest that remained, when a voice at 
 my elbow said, " Could yo' spare dem white uns 
 climbin' on de clo'se rack yander? Sis is so per- 
 tikeler to have dem 'propriate, an' she done want no 
 common colours to break luck, all nice white roses, 
 an' I've brought a sash to tie 'em jes' like hern, if 
 you'd be so good's to bow it on. Folks reckon down 
 town you've got such a way o' techin' things." 
 
 Thus beguiled, I arranged a graceful bouquet of 
 Madame Plantier, unlike the stiff pyramid of my 
 first intention, fringed it round about with moss 
 buds and maidenhair, wild, to be sure, and tied 
 it firmly with string, then held out my hand for the 
 ribbon, rebuking myself the while for smiling at the 
 dark woman's desire for the symbolic white. Wasted 
 twinge of conscience, as many New England twinges 
 are ! The " sash " was fully two yards long and of 
 intense scarlet !
 
 XIV 
 JULY 
 
 THE BED OF SWEET ODOURS 
 
 July 2. I think it was Jefferies who said, " The 
 sowing of life in the springtime is not in the set 
 straight line of the drill." Surely every one must 
 realize this, who lives close to Nature and watches 
 her mobility, for the incoming of growth envelops 
 both the cultivated and the wild garden of the field 
 and wood like the returning tide that first creeps 
 wildly hither and thither, covering the open flats, and 
 merely curling about the higher places, until finally 
 gathering sudden force, every bar and promontory is 
 suddenly submerged by the wave of colour, so that 
 we scarcely realize that the tide is high until it is 
 well-nigh ready to ebb again. 
 
 To-day for the first time in a month I have sat 
 under the Mother Tree, with folded hands, passively 
 drinking in the beauty of my garden without feeling 
 spurred to do so much as tie up a vine. The last bit 
 of summer sowing is over, the planting of the third 
 
 268
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 269 
 
 instalment of gladiolus bulbs, the other two having 
 been set in middle May and June successively. These 
 I have grouped in close circles of six, so that when 
 ready to bloom in late September they may be tied to 
 a central stake, making a sort of bush instead of hav 
 ing the military stiffness of single specimens. 
 
 As I leaned back against the tree trunk and 
 looked up through the twigs, where the sun rays 
 fluttered among the leaves, I saw that a new branch, 
 as yet slender and unformed, is springing from the 
 trunk beside the wound left by the limb that was 
 rent in the great snowstorm. To me, the wonder 
 of perpetual renewal is as great as ever. That is the 
 stimulus of nature ; it is never, never old, and always 
 developing. Even the scarred, wrinkled earth herself 
 is a mere infant among the old ladies and gentlemen 
 that tread foot-paths in the sky ; and I dare say that 
 she is frequently rebuked by her sun-mother, for 
 frivolity, besides having to listen to long tales of hap 
 penings in the good old days when she was an imma 
 ture, roly-poly fire ball without a rock in her head. 
 
 It is delicious sometimes to do nothing simply for 
 its own sake. As I leaned luxuriantly back and 
 alternately looked down the vista of the long walk 
 toward the sun garden and into the rose arbour, then 
 closing my eyes and merely breathing in fragrance
 
 2;o THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 and sound, I was no longer the commuter's wife who 
 breakfasts at seven, and is obliged to, partly at least, 
 observe the conventionalities, but a Lotus Eater lis 
 tening to the nightingale. I'm not at all sure that 
 flower and bird inhabit the same country, but I'm 
 sure they ought to. 
 
 I did not care a particle as to which flowers gave 
 the perfume or what birds the music. I was simply 
 saturated with both, and resolving not to move until 
 afternoon, I must have fallen asleep; for the next 
 thing I knew, I was startled by an emphatic bump 
 on the head, caused by a falling apple and Bertie's 
 voice, which said, " The young cabbage-flowers are of 
 the beautifullest. It should much pleasure you to see 
 she." 
 
 Vegetables are a most wholesome and necessary 
 a.djunct to a flower garden, though of course there 
 are people who would transpose this sentiment. I 
 went immediately to see the cauliflowers, and at 
 once became enveloped in a contrasting atmosphere 
 of bean poles, pea brush, tomato trellis, and cab 
 bages, where mathematical preciseness and the 
 straight lines of beets, carrots, lettuce, and parsley 
 drew my wandering vision into focus again. As to 
 the cauliflowers, I could honestly admire " she," milk- 
 white in a crisp green setting, and surely the rosy
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 271 
 
 beets with their colour running well up into the foli 
 age, and the delicate, translucent green of the long 
 heads of Trianon Cos lettuce are beautiful, while the 
 great bunches of ripening currants bring as fine a 
 colour to the vegetable garden as the oriental poppy 
 lends the parterre. Then, too, the vegetable garden 
 has, to counteract the pungent breath of cauliflower 
 and cabbage, a fragrant bouquet all its own, that is 
 distilled nightly by the dew, the breath of sage, 
 thyme, sweet marjoram, basil, and lavender. 
 
 Yes, I am a pagan, as I have often suspected. I 
 have a material streak in me that finds intense 
 satisfaction in soup vegetables and pot herbs as 
 well as roses and honeysuckle. Sickness alone de 
 prives me of my appetite, and I have never yet 
 been so sad or sentimental that I felt a loathing 
 for my luncheon. I think father and Evan encour 
 age this materialism in me, and so does Martha 
 Corkle, who sees that luncheon comes to me if 
 father is not at home and outdoors bids fair to 
 hypnotize me. 
 
 Father says that hungry sentiment develops 
 melancholy, but well-fed sentiment, enthusiasm ; so I 
 suppose that I must be an enthusiast. 
 
 There are four great pleasures of gardening the 
 planting, the development, the gathering, and the
 
 272 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 distributing. Each one in its turn seems the keen 
 est, and surely the last is not the least ; for what is 
 life worth if one has nothing to give away ? This 
 lack, it seems to me, must be the sharpest pang of 
 poverty. 
 
 Then, too, garden gifts are all pleasure light 
 and slight matter-of-course gifts that carry no im 
 pediment of obligation with them ; for one may 
 give a whole basket of home-grown flowers when 
 a mere handful, if purchased, would be an intru 
 sion. Here again, in order to fulfil its destiny, the 
 garden must be dual, flower and vegetable ; for 
 there is always a neighbour whose peas are affected 
 with weevils, whose lettuce has run prematurely to 
 seed, or a dear old farmer crank at the hospital 
 who has fallen from the hay-mow and fractured a 
 rib or leg (this seems a favourite midsummer pas 
 time of farmers past middle age ; the young ones 
 fall from cherry trees), who is "pining for garden 
 sass " or a " good dish of beets and raw onions with 
 plenty of cider vinegar." Not to mention my Lady 
 of the Bluffs, who, I know of old, would stray out 
 from father's office, where she had called, and levy 
 upon the necessary leaf, fruit, or berry for some 
 desired entre'e. 
 
 It is strange oftentimes to see how little the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 273 
 
 gardens of the rich yield them, even in satisfaction 
 in proportion to the outlay; but perhaps it is well, 
 else we middlings would have no ground upon 
 which to meet them, which would deprive us of 
 much merriment. 
 
 I lunched in the garden to-day, and Martha served 
 me with her own hands, a mark of attention denoting 
 either special favour or a desire for the opportunity 
 of private discourse. Really she is not as plump as 
 she was, and though she says nothing, I sometimes 
 feel the ghost of the " 'ome-brewed " is between us. 
 
 She arranged the little table that we keep under 
 the rose arbour for after-dinner coffee quite deftly 
 in the breeziest corner, and had brought out the 
 tray before I realized what she was about. But as 
 my look of inquiry was unanswered, I asked more as 
 a form than from a desire for information, " Where 
 is Delia?" 
 
 "She is not feeling exactly herself, Mrs. Evan," 
 Martha replied, stopping short with pursed-up lips, 
 evidently hesitating between merely answering the 
 question and opening a conversation. 
 
 "I wonder why she didn't tell me she was ill," 
 I said half to myself.
 
 274 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " I'll not go so far as to call her hill, Mrs. Evan, 
 but shook up and scattered like, and she took the 
 chance of slippin' down to speak with the priest 
 about it, while he would be in at his dinner, the 
 same which I call a liberty, having ought to ask 
 you." 
 
 Shaken ? scattered ? priest ? I could not unravel 
 the matter, so I told Martha to explain, as she was 
 so evidently anxious to do. 
 
 "Well, it's this way, Mrs. Evan, for it's not 
 listening and tattling to repeat what is spoken 
 aloud to those who has a right to hear. When 
 Delia broke with Patrick Doolan the night before 
 she thought to hear the banns read, she was glad 
 enough for a while, free in her mind and well con 
 tent to be rid of him. After a time, howsomever, 
 the waste of her wedding gown, as it were, set heavy 
 on her; for you see, Mrs. Evan, it were all made 
 and ready even to the neck frill, blue silk trimmed 
 out with white lace, and a white hat, with a 
 plume that long" (measuring the length of her 
 arm) "all curled up around it. 
 
 " I said as there were other men to marry, to com 
 fort her, as it were ; but she says, ' Mrs. Corkle, 
 what's other men to me so long as they doesn't 
 ask me, and my dress going out of style from
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 275 
 
 backs coming in fuller, which can't be changed, 
 it being a remnant?' The same being quite the 
 truth, Mrs. Evan. 
 
 "Then she took down-hearted, and news kept 
 comin' to her that Patrick had never done a day's 
 work since Hallowe'en and was drinking most 
 shocking. ' I never thought he was that fond o' 
 me,' she'd keep saying, and rocking to and fro, 
 'and it's I that was a fool to throw away me luck, 
 and a fine house, too.' 
 
 " ' I kenned it was yersel' was throwed, hoose 
 and a',' said Timothy Saunders, unfortunate-like, 
 one night. So for a while she kept her trouble 
 to herself, out of stiff pride. 
 
 " Last night I was sitting down to my needle, 
 when some one knocked, and I opened the door to 
 a respectable looking body dressed out quite decent 
 in black. Before I learned her business she was 
 past me, to where Delia sat at the machine, and 
 a-kneeling before her, crying and taking on not 
 fit or proper for a woman of her years. 
 
 " Mrs. Evan, if it was not old Mrs. Doolan beg 
 ging Delia to marry her son to save him from death 
 by drink and disappointment, then Corkle isn't dead 
 and I his widow ! 
 
 " Mrs. Evan, Delia gave her promise all too ready-
 
 2/6 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 like, I'm thinking, and the two went out crying to 
 gether, to run down Patrick, whose whereabouts I 
 mistrusted was undecided." 
 
 " Is the old woman going to give them the farm ? " 
 I asked, quite confounded at the turn of affairs, for 
 I thought Bertie was consoling Delia. 
 
 " That she is not ! She says that Delia may live 
 in with her, and that she'll not object to her takin' 
 up work in the shop, if she feels like keepin' inde 
 pendent." Here a fine sneer of derision curved 
 Martha's nostrils. 
 
 "And the boil-down of it all is that Delia is 
 going to be fool enough not only to marry a 
 man what's at best a burnt match, and now con 
 fessed always in liquor, but she's going in with 
 the old party, Mrs. Evan, who will undertake to 
 see her work to keep him idle." Here Martha 
 gave the tray a little push toward me, as if she 
 thought it time to change the subject. 
 
 " I will speak to father : he will never allow 
 Delia to throw herself away like this." 
 
 " Best not, Mrs. Evan. The doctor is clever, no 
 doubt, but this marryin' rascals is a disease beyond 
 him, especially when the parties is Irish, for I 
 knows them well and thorough ; they blows hot and 
 cold so quick, it keeps hothers all of a shiver, and
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 277 
 
 when you reaches out the 'elpin' 'ands, it's not me 
 nor you can tell if it's a kiss or a knife they'll meet. 
 
 " What does concern me is this, the seein' you 
 inconvenienced by changes in hot weather, Mrs. 
 Evan. Delia should give her proper month's 
 warning, but instead she's took her bank-book 
 and gone down to the priest to get him to speak 
 with Patrick and hurry the wedding without the 
 calling of banns, if it may so be. 
 
 " Now, Mrs. Evan, Timothy Saunders's sister's 
 girl, Effie, is leaving service in Canada and is 
 looking to crossing to the States, having written 
 her uncle to speak for her where he is acquainted. 
 Which same I bid him do, but he being so back 
 ward, I'll venture it for him, that you might try 
 her, the same making less of a mixed family, you 
 know, ma'am." 
 
 I assented, thanked Martha, and she departed. 
 As the luncheon was a cold one, it had not suffered 
 by delay. An egg and lettuce salad, waferlike 
 sandwiches of ham and chicken, strawberries 
 heaped on their own leaves, hulls on, with sugar 
 to dip them in, and a glass of milk. As I ate 
 leisurely, thinking of Delia the while, Bluff came 
 up for crusty bits, as a matter of course, but The 
 Orphan seated himself at a distance and sniffed
 
 278 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 until I called him. That last arrival is a curious 
 character study, a self-made dog, deserving admira 
 tion for his reserve, but much like a person whom 
 it takes years to outlive a youth of deprivation. 
 When he first came to us, after living between coal- 
 box and wall in the flagman's house, he did not 
 understand having space to move about in, and so 
 he continually backed solemnly into corners. I love 
 Bluff, but I can only respect The Orphan, who is 
 old before his time, and while faithful, yet is too 
 humble, and lacks the spontaneity that makes young 
 children and animals lovable. 
 
 The air grew cooler in the early afternoon and 
 light clouds gave a grateful half-veiled atmosphere 
 that coaxed me to leave the tree and stroll to the sun 
 garden. Our scheme of grouping the spectrum 
 colours about the dial is a complete success, for the 
 zinnias are blooming evenly and the blue centaurea 
 matching them in height, the effect is at once rich 
 and unusual. Amid all the wealth of colour, the 
 blaze of light reflected from low-growing portulacca, 
 nasturtium, geraniums, and the first buds of many- 
 hued hollyhocks, it is through the nose more than 
 the eye that I am guided to where lowering clouds 
 are casting a few drops upon the bed of sweet 
 odours, thus completing the fragrant spell.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 279 
 
 Without such a bed no garden is completely 
 gracious, and yet few there are, pretentious or 
 humble, that have one. When Evan designed the 
 beds of the sun garden, he said that the tire of the 
 fiery wheel should be of subdued colours, shaded 
 greens or at most half tones. For a moment it 
 seemed that the dreaded coleus would be inevitable ; 
 then my Familiar Spirit whispered, " Let this circle 
 be your bed of sweet odours." 
 
 There are comparatively few wholly scentless 
 flowers, while there are many like hyacinths and 
 the ranker lilies whose heavy perfume closes the 
 house door upon them. These last, however, have a 
 very limited period of bloom, while the plants chosen 
 for my bed of sweet odours breathe fragrance from 
 frost going until its return and even after. 
 
 There are only three colours but many tints in this 
 bed of mine, green, silvery, velvety, and glossy; 
 violet, purple, and ruddy-gold. The plants are, 
 reckoned from tallest downwards, lemon verbena, 
 rose, nutmeg, and apple geraniums, heliotrope of 
 violet to mauve, annual wall-flowers of warm yellow, 
 and mignonette; this last being of three kinds, 
 Mammoth, Parson's white, and Machette. 
 
 Though the plants were set in rows each of a kind, 
 with the shrubby lemon verbenas as a ridge-pole,
 
 28o THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 and the mignonette edging the whole, by middle 
 June they were so blended that the earth was com 
 pletely hidden. Now with the greenery in luxurious 
 leaf, heliotrope and mignonette in bloom, this bed 
 holds more subtle fascination than any other. 
 Heliotrope is best enjoyed at morning and evening, 
 when the dew holds its fragrance earthward, for 
 when gathered it withers quickly, and if mingled with 
 other flowers in vase or jar, blackens and seems to 
 poison the water, causing the whole posy to droop. 
 In its bed it is one of the generous contributions to 
 the charm of the garden of night that lures us 
 abroad under the summer moon. 
 
 For the rest, the bed of sweet odours is most 
 pickable, and its foliage gives the crowning touch of 
 sympathy to each bouquet. For tea roses I choose 
 geranium leaves ; for sweet peas, a fringe of migno 
 nette, with long sprays of lemon verbena for asters 
 and old-fashioned hardy blossoms ; while the wall 
 flowers should flock quite alone, bunched in small 
 glass globes, that they may lose nothing of their 
 potency. I have grown this last flower a dozen years, 
 and yet it seems either quite unknown, or else set 
 aside for its more showy perennial brother, that in 
 this climate needs winter housing. This humble 
 annual, if sown early and if the season is not too
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 281 
 
 wet, blooms from July until snow hides it, and I 
 once remember gathering a delicious bunch on a 
 Christmas morning. 
 
 In a nook of this darling bed of mine hides a 
 silvery cut-leaved plant, a mascot that I hope 
 will thrive and soon hold a braver place. This 
 plant is rosemary, the flower of remembrance. I 
 brought this little root from Shottery, and it is 
 planted here in remembrance of the glory of the 
 literature of the mother tongue and of all true 
 lovers. 
 
 If flowers make a garden, so also do the greens 
 that form their setting, and I now find the wild 
 space beyond the sun garden inseparable from the 
 cultivated in this matter. The madonna lilies now 
 in perfect bloom, when gathered, need delicate 
 maidenhair and lady ferns for company, while holly 
 hocks set in the great India jars should emerge 
 from a mass of vigorous brakes in order to hide 
 their usual shabbiness of stalk. 
 
 July 1 6. Full moon, and both single and double 
 hollyhocks at height. All day long the garden is 
 a-bloom under full pressure of the sun and frequent 
 showers, and the bright moon so carries day into 
 night that we often stay out until the striking of 
 the magic hour, and even then I linger at my lat-
 
 282 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 tice window, for below lies the moonlit garden, an 
 etching framed by trees. 
 
 For a week past Evan and I have been wan 
 dering in the garden of night, as we call it, and 
 continually meeting surprises in familiar places. 
 One of the alcoves in the border of the long walk 
 is filled with yellow evening primroses mingled with 
 the starry, long-tubed flowers of white tobacco 
 (nicotiana affinis}. Both of these open at sunset, 
 a time when sweet peas furl their butterfly wings 
 and many other plants contract both flower and 
 leaf; then all through the night they give forth the 
 fragrance that lures their insect lovers, so that 
 above them is a perpetual flight of moths, while 
 the blending of gold and silver under the moon- 
 spell defies description. The most gorgeous of red, 
 crimson, pink, blue, and purple flowers grow dark 
 at night in proportion to their daytime richness, 
 and it is to the light colours alone that the garden 
 then owes its beauty. 
 
 Night before last we were wandering about the 
 garden, peering in corners where masses of holly 
 hocks that had strayed without border bounds re 
 flected moonlight from their disks, and great spiders 
 spread their webs across open spaces and hung in 
 waiting, savagely patient while the dew turned their 
 homespun into cloth of gold.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 283 
 
 Suddenly a snapping noise seemed to drop from 
 a spruce tree overhead. There was a ponderous 
 flapping of wings and a note of warning that 
 sounded like the passing of a broom across a sanded 
 floor. The tree was half in deep shadow, but after 
 a few moments we could see the outline of some 
 stocky birds that were sitting in a row upon a limb 
 close to the trunk. Another cry, a flapping and 
 shifting, and we named them screech owls, and their 
 number five, evidently two parents and three owlets. 
 Then the dance began. 
 
 If I had ever doubted the capacity of animals 
 for play, I should now be converted. Of course a 
 habit of gambolling is common enough among dogs, 
 cats, and the intelligent quadrupeds, but I had never 
 before suspected the solemn owl of such humour, 
 and shall in future regard it as a professional wag 
 of great ability. 
 
 At first the old birds mystified their children by 
 separating and giving the " get to cover " cry from 
 separate trees. This seemed to be by way of 
 emergency drill, and lasted half an hour, until at 
 the signal the youngsters stopped flopping about 
 aimlessly and flew direct. 
 
 They were quite fearless and did not object to 
 our presence in the least. In fact, as we tried to
 
 284 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 follow their erratic course through the garden and 
 wood lot, and along the grassy walk that, edged 
 by daisies, seemed a pathway to the moon direct, 
 they seemed to take delight in seeing how nearly it 
 was possible to fly into our faces without absolutely 
 touching us. 
 
 Once safe in the fastness of hemlocks and spruces, 
 their tactics changed. Perching five in a row upon 
 a downward sloping branch, they pushed and jostled 
 each other until the one nearest the end was crowded 
 off. Instantly it flew to the top of the line and 
 took its turn at edging, until each had slipped off 
 many times. When at last they became tired of 
 this aerial coasting, they silently disappeared in the 
 darkness of the woods. 
 
 July 22. The owl play still continues nightly, and 
 Evan and I take part in it and likewise gain a fine 
 view of their antics by flashing a small electric 
 search-light into the deep shadows, thus catching 
 grotesque poses and their amazed and dazed expres 
 sions. Last night two of the owlets ventured close 
 to the house, and sat for some time a-top the clothes 
 poles, turning their heads about so completely that 
 they threatened to wring their own necks ; then snap 
 ping their beaks, they crooned, and conversed quite 
 plainly in high class owl, much to Bluff's indigna-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 285 
 
 tion, until he howled furiously and dashed at the 
 poles so desperately that they lurched away, uttering 
 unmistakable swear words. 
 
 This is hollyhock week, and the forest of gayly 
 draped stalks flanks half the length of the long walk, 
 overflows the corner of the bank wall, and straggles 
 in a crowd toward the barn, where it forms a hollow 
 square about the chicken house. The hollyhock 
 disports all colours and tints, white, pink, cerise, 
 crimson, apricot, yellow, and blush, both with a 
 decided pink eye and a rosily diffused centre. 
 
 Having been let alone for several years, the single 
 or half double flowers predominate, and I am quite 
 sure that I prefer them to the heavy double blossoms, 
 whose chief claim is their solidity of form and colour ; 
 otherwise they are nearer kin to the paper roses that 
 garnish Christmas mutton than to garden flowers. 
 
 The phloxes that have massed themselves regard 
 less of colour, are showing bloom, white, crimson, 
 white with crimson eye, and dull purple. Neither in 
 colour nor form are they as handsome as the young 
 plants we set out last October, among which many 
 new shades of cherry, salmon, and rose appear. 
 
 Phloxes especially require frequent resetting, else
 
 286 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 they crowd themselves out, the flower clusters grow 
 small, while they lapse to the parent colours from 
 which they were hybridized more rapidly than other 
 hardy plants. Now are the nasturtiums rampant, and 
 their trellis seems consumed with a flame that reach 
 ing over has caught the salvia tips. The annuals that 
 I bought from the "Yellow Journal" catalogue are 
 making a fine showing, having an alcove all to them 
 selves, and Evan almost acknowledges that the 
 Pekin Perfection Carnation Poppy is gorgeous, "at 
 least at present," he added cynically. 
 
 The first planting of gladiolus is in bloom, and I 
 have been surprised and fascinated by the beauty of 
 the new hybrids. Here, too, the range of colour 
 covers everything but blue, and the exquisitely shaded 
 and veined flowers, no longer contracted and stiff, 
 but winged and poised gracefully on the stalks, seem 
 more like a new discovery than a development. 
 
 The moon gets up late nowadays, having a slant 
 wise, rakish look, and I am often tempted to leave 
 bed for my window where I could sit for hours listen 
 ing to the owlets' shivery laugh and looking down 
 at the groups of striped and spotted euialia that 
 shimmer like fountains in the moonlight. Delia, 
 who is to be married on Sunday evening, she having 
 failed to get her dispensation owing to the reluctance
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 287 
 
 of the bridegroom, has asked me to have the owls 
 killed, as, if they cross her path the night of the 
 wedding, ill luck will surely follow her. A nice way 
 to cast the sure result of her own folly upon Fate 
 impersonated by me! But the owls are quite safe. 
 
 The improvident song sparrows that built in the 
 rose spray have not learned wisdom by experience. 
 Yesterday afternoon as the wind that foretells a 
 shower was sweeping the garden, Bertie discovered 
 their second nest, in which were three young birds. 
 It was set squarely upon a broad corymb of feverfew 
 which, having gone to seed, was ready to snap at 
 any moment and the other foliage that had sheltered 
 it was beaten down. Silly sparrows ! In whose gar 
 den were you raised ? Were there no honest bushes 
 there ? 
 
 We slipped an improvised platform under the 
 nest and braced it with four corner stakes using an 
 inverted strawberry box as a canopy, making a 
 structure that, as Evan said, looked like the judge's 
 box on a race track. The birds seemed satisfied, 
 however, and stayed by the nest, which was thus 
 enabled to weather the storm. 
 
 I believe that those sparrows were orphans and
 
 288 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 double first cousins raised by a maiden aunt in a gar 
 den of flimsy foliage beds. Nothing else can justify 
 their dementia. I wonder if they will make another 
 nesting venture this season and where it will be. 
 
 July 29. Delia was married at seven last even 
 ing. The gods were not propitious, for it rained, 
 though of course the fact that the wedding gown 
 was still fashionable was the main thing. 
 
 A funereal city hack containing the groom and 
 bridesmaid came to the side door, and as I bade 
 Delia good-by, in pity I pretended not to see that 
 the redness of the groom's face was from other 
 causes than bashfulness. The bride was white as 
 her ostrich plume, and unluckily, as they drove out 
 the gate, a mischievous owl gave a perfectly audible 
 though distant hoot. 
 
 Mrs. Mullins dropped in this morning to "give 
 me the news " and a fragment of very boggy 
 wedding cake. 
 
 " Sure, Miss Barbara darlint, 'tis bad to be shifty 
 moinded altogether, and that's what them three are, 
 mother, son, and Dalia. I'm looking for loively 
 times betuchen them. 'Six to one,' says I to Mullins, 
 ' if Dalia isn't in the onion fields agin spring, like the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 289 
 
 old woman used herself ! Then do yer mind the 
 three bad omens, darlint ? " 
 
 "The rain and the owl," I answered, "but what 
 was the third?" 
 
 " Oh, wherra ! wherra ! Crowin' hens is common, 
 but the likes o' the last doin's is seldom known, 
 though I onct heard it out o' County Kerry, that 
 same bein' next me own.' 
 
 "Old woman Doolan she mischanced to raise a 
 pair o' crowin' hens lasht fall, and all the neighbours 
 has beseeched her to kill them lest ill luck befall the 
 sittlement, goin' so far as to beg the priest to inter 
 fere. But not an axe would she take to them, they 
 bein' foine layers. 
 
 " What's amiss wid crowin' hens ? Shure now, 
 that's aisy. Ye know well the cock that crew three 
 times and give the lie to St. Peter to his shamin' ? 
 Well, the blessed saint cursed him well for his impu 
 dence and turned him to a hen, the mother o' the 
 whole lot, and that's why, himself doing it, the curse 
 holds that firm that holy water itself can't dissholve 
 it. 
 
 " Now what does the old devil do, unbeknownst 
 
 but only to me on account of the knot-hole, she 
 
 being stingy, but kill thim hins for the weddin' 
 
 f aste ! Did ye ever hear the loikes ? For we all 
 
 u
 
 290 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 knows that of a sprinklin' o' holy water even won't 
 break the power o' crowin' hens, 'tis a mortal sin to 
 touch them. So, says I to meself, ' It's the same 
 as aitin' death'; and though they was biled and 
 dressed wid onions, I come from the feast fastin', 
 but Dalia she ate her fill!"
 
 XV 
 
 AUGUST 
 
 A PLEA FOR A WILD LAWN 
 
 August 5. Effie has come and dropped so 
 quickly into our needs and ways that even the 
 good points possessed by Delia, being at best " writ 
 in water," are quite obliterated. Effie has lived 
 for two years in medical families overseas, one 
 being that of a real M.D. and surgeon, the other 
 only a medical man. I wish that I could compass 
 this English professional distinction, but I cannot. 
 However, as far as Effie is concerned, it suffices to 
 say that she is fully impressed with the importance 
 of remembering a message and writing the names 
 and needs of callers upon the record pad in a firm 
 angular hand which is one of the best results of 
 the public education of British females. Likewise 
 she has the gift of afternoon tea making, knowing 
 after a single lesson the quality of August day when 
 cracked ice and lemon should be served instead of 
 milk, and quite agreeing with my taste, that many 
 
 291
 
 292 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 consider whimsical, which prefers good milk to 
 cream, as the latter cloys the palate and destroys 
 the flavour of really fine tea. 
 
 I am glad that there is no possibility of my Gar 
 den Boke ever falling under the eye of a critic even 
 as comprehensive as Evan, for the question would 
 surely rise, Why so much of domestic affairs in an 
 outdoor annal ? As both in- and out-door life are 
 equal members of the body vital, they must be in 
 perfect harmony to produce that even mental cir 
 culation known as happiness. The mutual discom 
 fort of having either state awry is as unsatisfactory 
 as warming one's fingers at a cheerful blaze at the 
 same time that one's feet are in a tub of ice water. 
 
 The garden is en fete these days. In an equable 
 season like this, August is the gala of the spring- 
 sown annuals as well as of many perennials of the 
 hot summer colours. 
 
 Scarlet, and its allied tints, that started with the 
 oriental poppies, is now represented by the vivid 
 nasturtium and geranium hues, shooting its tongue 
 of flame in salvias and gladioli, while the phloxes 
 that outline the long walk are now at their best 
 and run through all the shades of lake and car-
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 293 
 
 mine to purplish lavender, the same colours appear 
 ing as eyes in the white varieties. 
 
 Yet even where scarlet and magenta almost meet, the 
 antagonism is averted and turned to barbaric splen 
 dour by the groups of glowing golden rudbeckia 
 that combines in its blooms the richest of sun 
 flower colour, with Dahlia solidity, and the long 
 stems of specimen chrysanthemums. 
 
 The auratum lilies planted last November are 
 coming forward finely. They were grouped mainly 
 in the bulb beds below the study windows, where 
 they came the earliest in bloom. But for an ex 
 periment I scattered a couple of dozen bulbs at 
 random, through the beds of the long walk, and 
 the effect of the great golden-banded, ruby-spotted 
 flowers is magical, giving depth of focus to the 
 maze of phlox, as well as the thrill of oriental 
 suggestion that the lily and iris tribes always 
 bring with them. In an old-fashioned garden 
 such as mine, this result must be by suggestion 
 only ; for if it is allowed to dominate, it becomes 
 incongruous, and would wholly denationalize the 
 garden. This is why Evan bars palms, caladiums, 
 castor beans, and all such growths, only allowing 
 the graceful eulalias as an equivalent of the humbler 
 old-time ribbon errass.
 
 294 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 August 8. This is the month for gathering 
 flowers, not as individuals, but in masses, when a 
 sickle is often more serviceable than scissors. In 
 fact, this morning I possessed myself of a mass of 
 phlox and golden glow in this manner, and filled 
 the study fireplace with them most effectively with 
 out rearrangement, using an old stoneware jug, 
 to hold the water. So often the best effects in 
 decoration come from transferring the flowers 
 indoors without disturbing their natural pose. 
 Gather an armful of goldenrod, for instance, put 
 it in a jar, with only a loosening shake to adjust 
 it, and the most careful spray by spray arrange 
 ment will not yield equal grace. 
 
 The dogs are happy again, being free of the 
 garden, for now that the ground is everywhere 
 covered, instinct seems to keep them to the walk, 
 and Bluff hardly gives a tail wag of apology, when 
 he joins me, stepping carefully between the rows, 
 or sitting gazing at me with apparent interest, 
 as I fill my basket from the beds of the long 
 walk. 
 
 That we have the poor always with us, is one 
 of the most daily evident of the Master's truths,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 295 
 
 especially if the term is allowed, as it must be, 
 to cover the inefficient. The illustrations in point 
 usually come to me from the hospital or the fac 
 tory cottages, but once again the offenders belong 
 to the world of garden birds. Those poor mis 
 guided song sparrows have built their third nest, 
 three feet above ground in a bush of golden glow, 
 at the junction of a twisted stalk with the support 
 ing string and stake ! This morning I well-nigh 
 dumped out the four eggs in trying to straighten 
 the plant. 
 
 I had a mind to leave them to their fate, but who 
 would risk the lives of four possible song sparrows 
 that may return and bring joy to a gloomy March 
 day, for the sake of giving their parents a moral 
 lesson ? 
 
 Not Barbara, surely, so I made a very neat struc 
 ture of double mosquito net, a sort of skeleton nest, 
 and fastened it by the corners to four slender bam 
 boo stakes, very much as a redwing blackbird hangs 
 his home between the reeds. 
 
 With Bertie's aid I slipped it under the toppling 
 nest so that it was made secure without altering its 
 location. The sparrows did not seem alarmed in the 
 slightest, and this afternoon they are alternately 
 brooding and feeding cheerfully upon the crumbs of
 
 296 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 dog biscuit that are always plentiful about the ken 
 nels. I must tell Tim that this biscuit makes the 
 best bird food that he can scatter about the barnyard 
 and hayricks in winter. 
 
 I'm wondering if these are Severely Protestant, 
 clerical song sparrows who think the world owes 
 them a living, and so thrust their progeny at it alms- 
 basinwise ! Well, I think it does, as far as the spar 
 rows go, when you take their joy-giving qualities into 
 consideration, which is certainly less often the case 
 with their human prototypes. 
 
 Three new blossoms are this month added to the 
 garden of night, one, the moon flower, a half hardy 
 convolvulus, festooning some poles that are joined by 
 light rods on either side of the long walk, while the 
 other two are silvery pink petunias and white, pink, 
 and yellow four-o'clocks that fill in the alcove be 
 tween the evening primroses and nicotiana. 
 
 The sweet peas still yield even more flowers than I 
 can comfortably pick, and Evan comes to my aid 
 every evening, though very soon now our after-din 
 ner gardening will have to be done by either moon or 
 lantern light. 
 
 I wish that I could have an interview with the
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 297 
 
 Equinoxes and the Chief Engineer of the Earth's 
 Orbit, and persuade them to alter its grade, especially 
 on the curves, so that all the long days might be 
 bunched between May first and October, and thus 
 some hours of light be stolen from March and April 
 for the benefit of August and September. 
 
 The dark mornings and evenings of early fall and 
 winter are one of the trials of the commuter and his 
 wife that can only be overcome by a large supply of 
 "sweetness and light." 
 
 The garden of books, to be sure, mitigates and con 
 soles the evening end, but as for the morning from 
 November to March, even the always questionable 
 consolation of the fact that the " early bird catches 
 the worm " is quite valueless. The commuter 
 who lives at a reasonable distance can only 
 console himself with knowing that he has had at 
 least an hour more sleep than if he lived in town, 
 and his wife's reward lies in her power to keep her 
 promise of sending him off well nourished and trim, 
 no list of errands in his pocket, no egg on his mus 
 tache, and no crumb, but merely an invisible kiss on 
 his chin. 
 
 Alack that this short time between seven and eight 
 A.M. should be the downfall of so many well-ordered 
 lives ! Last winter after the great storm Evan
 
 298 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 christened this time the " philosophical hour," saying 
 that as under modern pressure one needs to give an 
 hour out of every twenty-four to this cult, the earlier 
 it comes in the day, the better. 
 
 August 20. I have realized anew the almost 
 spiritual beauty of the common morning-glory. I 
 avoided planting these flowers anywhere about the 
 garden, because they seed so freely that they soon 
 become an annoyance, strangling more important 
 plants, and even tangling up the vegetables mis 
 chievously. Instead, I have given them a screen 
 that breaks the bareness of the tool house, and 
 let them run riot. The leaves are not especially 
 notable, being rather coarse; but the flowers are 
 as exquisite in their richly coloured fragility as if 
 Aurora, in the bath, had amused herself by blowing 
 bubbles. These, catching the sunrise glow, floated 
 away upon the breeze, and falling on a wayside 
 vine, opened into flowers that from their origin 
 vanish again under the sun's caress. 
 
 Among all their colours none is more beautiful or 
 usual than the rich purple with the ruddy throat 
 merging to white night shadows melting into the 
 clear of dawn.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 299 
 
 August is one of the few growing months when 
 the female gardener may, without neglecting her 
 posies, if she chooses, attire herself becomingly, sit 
 on the porch in idleness, and read a novel. 
 
 To be sure, work is still to be done, but the 
 weeding and tying to stakes is not so violently 
 necessary as heretofore. The building of the cold 
 pit, a sort of small, sunken greenhouse, in the bank 
 south of the barn, is being conducted by Bertie 
 with a carpenter to help him, though of course the 
 cuttings that are to be kept in it must soon be set 
 in sand to root. 
 
 I was thus lounging and reading a novel, not 
 a new one, for, thank Heaven, my hardy perennials 
 in this line have not given out, but " Christian's 
 Mistake," one from my Tauchnitz family that live 
 together in one bookcase, wearing a cheerful uni 
 form of half red morocco, when father drove up, 
 and, without first going to consult his office pad, 
 seated himself opposite me with a perturbed look 
 upon his face. 
 
 I smiled encouragingly, and was instantly pre 
 pared to supply any need, from flowers through 
 fruit and soup to baby linen, the last "loan bas 
 ket" of which, after having been nicely laundered, 
 was enjoying an unusual rest.
 
 300 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " I have a very special favour to ask of you, 
 daughter," father began, his solemnity striking me 
 with dismay. 
 
 "With pleasure," I answered; "that is," as an 
 idea struck me, " unless it is to go somewhere away 
 from home and stay all night." 
 
 " No, it is to invite a guest here for a whole 
 week." 
 
 "Not Aunt Lot and the Reverend Jabez ! " I 
 cried, jumping up so that " Christian " fell sprawl 
 ing on the floor to the bending of a morocco corner. 
 
 " Dora Penfield," he said, much to my relief, then 
 paused to give me time to recollect when I had last 
 heard of her. 
 
 Dora Penfield ! Ah, yes, I recollect. She was 
 the orphan daughter of an old school friend of 
 mother's, who used to live with a distant relative, 
 in a stately colonial house on the farther edge of 
 town. One of those fine old places, with good china 
 and mahogany within doors, and box-edged walks 
 and a well-preserved garden without, that had much 
 impressed my girlish fancy. In those days, though 
 several years under thirty, she had been quite a 
 personage, a lady bountiful, and every one had 
 been surprised when, without apparent reason, she 
 had suddenly closed the house, all but a few rooms
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 301 
 
 for a caretaker, and had gone abroad to "study 
 art." 
 
 The community was amazed, for to it " art " was 
 an extremely indefinite term (which, by the way, it 
 really is in such cases), variously meaning china 
 painting, embroidering fat strawberries or flowers 
 on tea cloths in such high relief that the cups and 
 saucers go rocking about among them as if at sea. 
 Or, more novel yet and quite the latest thing, 
 copying chromos of gamebirds in oils on well-var 
 nished bread boards, the same to be hung by an 
 elaborately careless knot of hemp rope over the 
 dining-room mantle, surmounted by either the family 
 gun, a tennis racket, boxing gloves, or a fishing 
 basket, according to material available. 
 
 The Emporium was sure that Dora Penfield (she 
 was never called " Miss " that was common) must 
 have lost her money, and hoped if there ever was 
 an auction up at the mansion, she might be alive to 
 go to it. 
 
 The Village Liar took an entirely different point 
 of view, affirming that a certain young doctor was 
 at the bottom of the change. He, after serving two 
 years at the hospital for a special course of study, 
 had gone to a distant city as junior assistant to a 
 well-known physician. The why and wherefore of
 
 302 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 the matter, however, she did not attempt to un 
 ravel. 
 
 As this flitted through my brain, I said, seeing 
 light :- 
 
 " I suppose she is returning from abroad, and 
 you think it would be more cheerful for her to come 
 here while her home is made ready than to go to 
 a hotel. Of course I will make her welcome, 
 though, if I remember rightly, I was always a bit 
 afraid of her, she sat up so straight, and had a long 
 slim waist, fine clothes, and such white, pointed 
 fingers." 
 
 " Her fingers will no longer be either white or 
 pointed soon," said father, with a sigh. " She has 
 come home not to open her house, but to take up 
 the vocation of a trained nurse. Why she does it, 
 I do not know. It is not from lack of money, and 
 as she is mentally and physically sound, I have no 
 choice but to take her; and I am glad to have our 
 new venture of a training school start with such 
 good material. When I saw her last week at the 
 hospital, she was quiet and serious, and her choice 
 is evidently not a mere whim. 
 
 " You know that we were to have opened the 
 school the middle of this month, but circumstances 
 have delayed the date a week. As she has made
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 303 
 
 all her arrangements through my mistake, I wish 
 to ask her here, where she will be as free as possible 
 from the village questioning that her resolve is sure 
 to call forth." 
 
 I am much relieved that there is nothing com 
 plicated about the visit. I see nothing strange in 
 her choice. Nursing always attracted me, and she 
 probably wants to understand how to care for sick 
 people properly, and perhaps have convalescents 
 sometimes share in her big house. 
 
 Father had but gone indoors when the Lady of 
 the Bluffs drove up, seemingly quite surprised to see 
 me clothed and in what she considers my right mind, 
 lying back in a piazza chair. 
 
 "Well, this is most unusual !" she gasped after 
 taking the stiffest seat. She always was breathless 
 on moving ; for her dress waist, which looked fluffy 
 and easy enough, was, I am sure, extremely tight 
 underneath, where some sort of rigid bar gave the 
 straight downward slope affected by Queen Bess, to 
 a form that naturally would express itself in the 
 one or more hillocks common to well-fed middle 
 age. 
 
 "To find you at 5 P.M. actually sitting still and 
 playing the lady ! Is your garden dead or are you 
 tired of it ? Mine is, or rather my fernery. Would
 
 304 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 you believe it, my dear, there were green bugs on 
 some of the ferns, and I told our new gardener (he is 
 a German, but only understands some outlandish 
 dialect, and does not take in a word of the easy con 
 versational German I speak) that I knew they ought 
 to be fumigated with something, and he'd better ask 
 for it at the store. I spoke slowly in English ; he 
 knows that better than his own tongue evidently, 
 though he won't try to speak it; and I'm sure he 
 understood, for he wrote down what I said. 
 
 " What does he do but go to the store and buy 
 sulphur candles, dozens of them, and not only kill all 
 the plants in the fern house, but my two darling 
 macaws as well, that I always have perched among 
 the plants in the conservatory when I give a blow 
 out. So decorative, you know ! Though I couldn't 
 keep them there all the time, for they screech so that 
 Jenks-Smith says they curdle his blood, which is 
 dangerous for a short-necked man who won't give 
 up port though it's horribly out of fashion. Well, 
 they are dead, the poor dears. Now, what would 
 you do ? " 
 
 "You might have them stuffed," I suggested. 
 
 " Oh, bother the birds ! About such incompetent 
 help, I mean." 
 
 " If I were you, I would hire a trained English or
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 30$ 
 
 Scotch gardener of experience, and then let him 
 engage his own assistants and give him full control," 
 I said, feeling sure that this was one of the many 
 cases where the master and mistress must learn of 
 the man. 
 
 " What ? and have no say-so about my own 
 things? I guess not. We began that way with a 
 ' trained English gardener,' and if you please, when 
 I ordered him to trim the rooms with cherry blossoms 
 from the young trees for my Japanese tea (I sat 
 under an umbrella and wore a ravishing costume 
 imported especially), he had the impudence to tell me 
 that if he picked the flowers, we must do without 
 cherries later. And when I told him that it was the 
 business of a trained man to see that we had cherries 
 anyhow, he left! When I asked why, the coach 
 man, who is Irish and sociable, told me that the 
 ' blamed thing ' said he ' had no use for such as us.' 
 Just fancy ! " 
 
 I suppressed a fit of giggles with great difficulty, 
 but Effie helped me out by arranging the tea table. 
 Ice and lemon this time, as befitted a very muggy, 
 ^iot afternoon. 
 
 As my lady sat and sipped, she has recently 
 lost a molar and so used her lips like a beak, she 
 forgot her woes, and suddenly reverted to me, saying,
 
 306 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Now you must really tell me what you are 
 thinking about. What are you planning ? You are 
 staring downhill there as if you had not heard a 
 word that I said. Ah, I know, you are thinking to 
 make that slope into a lawn, and a nice one it will 
 be if you can get the grass to take. We've had 
 horrid luck and are all ploughed up on three sides 
 again for the fourth time." 
 
 " A lawn ? Why, it is a lawn now ! " I exclaimed 
 indignantly, " a lovely, wild lawn." 
 
 "A wild lawn? How odd! just fancy! Why, it 
 is full of everything but grass. Somehow, I thought 
 a lawn was all grass, you know." This with a criti 
 cal squint that she always gives when she thinks she 
 has made a point. , 
 
 " I believe, now you mention it, that lawns are 
 usually made of plain ordinary grass all one even 
 colour, shaven, shorn, and oh, so monotonously 
 green ; an unnatural sort of thing, in short, just like 
 the foliage beds people freckle these lawns with. 
 
 " Now 'our lawn that you see down there is decid 
 edly unusual, I will grant, but it's perfectly natural and 
 not at all monotonous, for it's never the same colour 
 for two successive months. Nature, when undis 
 turbed, is never monotonous, you know. Even when 
 using green, the most frequent colour on her palette,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 307 
 
 she throws in contrasting tints by way of expression, 
 and you will seldom see two sides of a leaf of the 
 same hue, and the leaf stem frequently gives a bold 
 dash of bronze or purple. Look at the wild grasses 
 of meadows and marsh lands. Do not all the flower 
 colours wash over them in the course of the year, 
 and our bare hillsides wear nearly the heathery hues 
 of the old world ? 
 
 " In our climate the usual lawn implies a pro 
 cession of men picking out weeds, followed by an 
 other lot sprinkling a mixture of grass seed and 
 earth ; then comes a din of mowing machines, and 
 in the fall an avalanche of top dressing, making one 
 think of modernizing the old proverb, ' A grain of 
 wheat is worth a grain of gold ' to read ' A blade of 
 grass costs a grain of gold.' 
 
 " My lawn is full of resources, and therefore 
 makes few demands. An occasional sprinkling of 
 fertilizer is gratefully received and calls forth a 
 rich green blush of pleasure, but is not exacted ; a 
 very moderate trimming by a single mower keeps 
 its tresses in decent array. Then, too, it has its 
 seasons like the garden and many surprises to boot, 
 for in parts it has both moist and dry soil. 
 
 " In April, pussy-toes, the little white vernal ever 
 lasting, patter across it, and early blue violets hide
 
 308 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 between the tufty grass at the bottom toward the 
 stone fence. Saxafrage flowers spring from the 
 leafy rosettes in dry spots where the rock comes 
 nearly to the surface, and in late May moss pink 
 shows its rosy glow here and there. 
 
 "Then there are always guinea gold dandelions, 
 strewn at random, that later turn to down and fly 
 away like veritable flowers of magic. Next, following 
 the white violets, come blue speedwell, bluets and 
 coy windflowers in the moist hollow. A few vagrant 
 ox-eye daisies will hang about the fence edge and 
 nestle in among the shrubs, and Jack-over-the-ground 
 creeps hither and thither with golden cups and shin 
 ing leaves. 
 
 "In July yarrow spreads its fragrant fern-cut 
 leaves, and covers places where the grass is thin, 
 and bedstraw with its queer, rough stems and white 
 cross flowers, while up under the hemlock trees on 
 the right, Indian pipe raises its ghostly stems, and 
 pyrola flourishes under the beech tree by the bank 
 wall. 
 
 " Look across the green now, for the lawn is 
 delicately green, even if not wholly grass. Do you 
 see that purple tint where the slope begins ? It is 
 wild thyme, and next month these purple flowers will 
 be replaced by purple-bronze leaves, and yonder,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 309 
 
 climbing around the hill, is a trail of wild marjo 
 ram. Do you not smell the clean fragrance that 
 the afternoon dampness holds close ? My lawn is 
 a bouquet an acre wide ! " 
 
 " I smell turkey dressing," said my lady, suddenly. 
 
 I had quite forgotten to whom I was speaking, 
 but the shock sobered me at once. 
 
 " That is, soup flavouring, I mean ; but it's a right 
 stiff guess enough, I reckon, for they do use thyme 
 and such things in cooking. I remember ordering 
 some once when I used to go to market. 
 
 "Well, my dear, you always were odd, and you 
 can have your lawn a 'kitchen bouquet' if you 
 choose, but I'm sure our landscapist would say it 
 isn't at all the thing for us. 
 
 " By the way, where do you buy your tea ? It is 
 delicious ! Our butler never gets mine twice alike, 
 and he blames it on the second man whose duty 
 it is to see that the water .boils. He only pours it 
 on, of course, and serves it. 
 
 " Make it myself, as you always do in the indoor 
 season ? I tried it once and burned a hundred- 
 dollar mechlin sleeve drapery in the horrid urn lamp. 
 
 "Would you just give me a bunch of your delicious 
 lemon verbena ? It will be such a relief to have a 
 change in the flavouring in the finger glasses. The
 
 310 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 only good-smelling thing we have this year is rose 
 geranium, and we're done to death with it. Last 
 night I really believe the chef flavoured the ices 
 with it, and last week he candied some with rose 
 leaves, and they looked real well in my new pierced 
 silver basket." 
 
 I do not think that I shall sit upon the piazza. 
 in the afternoon again for some time. I shall have 
 the seat mended up in the old cherry tree where I 
 used to perch and play princess in a tower and feel 
 romantic ten years ago, and then I can vanish among 
 the branches where nothing worse than tree-toads 
 and blue-jays can see me. 
 
 I find myself wondering about Dora Penfield. 
 Is it a case of vocation, or is there a romance in 
 hiding? I wonder how Evan will bear up under 
 a whole week's visitation. If she comes Saturday, 
 I shall know all about it ; and if she doesn't, I shall 
 forget that I wanted to know, which will do quite 
 as well. I wonder if she will be interested in the 
 garden. I hope so, for I must do some hard work 
 again next week. 
 
 That reminds me that I have promised father 
 that I will speak to Martha about learning to make
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 311 
 
 Franco-American bread. Poor lamb, he is really 
 pathetic. He says he has eaten toast until he ex 
 pects to turn to crumbs, and that pikelets, muffins, 
 and Sally Lunn cakes are no longer a consolation 
 or substitutes. Heigh-ho! it is too late to-night. 
 
 Ah, how the fragrance floats up through the 
 window from my "bank whereon the wild thyme 
 grows." I wonder what Shakespeare would have 
 thought of Mrs. Jenks-Smith ! She would hardly 
 have considered him " the thing " ; but possibly 
 might have suggested that he give a reading in her 
 garden at half rates to introduce himself.
 
 XVI 
 
 SEPTEMBER 
 
 t " 
 
 THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS 
 
 September 5. The garden change between late 
 August and early September is in degree of ripe 
 ness only. Two weeks ago the annuals pleaded 
 their cause most eloquently by their cheerful profu 
 sion. Now a storm of a night and day that threat 
 ened to bring cool weather, but merely passed 
 over leaving a wake of yellow haze, has well-nigh 
 stripped these summer flowers of their fleeting 
 finery. Everywhere the seed pods raised above 
 the fallen petals make their bids for perpetuity, 
 while the early-blooming, hardy plants that escaped 
 trimming, like foxgloves and sweet William, are 
 already surrounded by a colony of downy, tender 
 green seedlings. 
 
 " Pods are the poppies, and slender spires of pods 
 The hollyhocks." 
 
 The alcove of camelia balsams is quite dishev 
 elled, and the pointed, cocoon-like pods, from which 
 
 3"
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 313 
 
 one always expects to see a moth or butterfly emerge, 
 are ripening at the bottom of the stalk, and sending 
 forth a fusilade of brown shot. These balsams, 
 though rather unpickable flowers, have been a two 
 months' glory, from their solid quality and the beau 
 tiful colours of the spurred blossoms. No annual 
 more perfectly displays the so-called pastel tints, 
 peachblow, lilac, mauve, ivory white, pale salmon, 
 in addition to vivid crimsons, scarlet, and many 
 vivid and spotted hybrids. 
 
 Alas for my bed of novelties from the "Yellow 
 Journal " catalogue ! Not only did it become merely 
 a mass of miscellaneous wreckage even before Au 
 gust ended, but so sodden and water-soaked that I 
 had to have the debris removed with a garden fork, 
 and Bertie has now thoroughly worked over the 
 ground for the first planting of Shirley poppies. 
 Those sown in early September make sturdy tufts 
 before frost, and in spring, bloom three weeks ear 
 lier than those from the October-sown seed that 
 does not germinate until April. 
 
 Father and Evan have taken their vacations 
 during the past three months by daily install 
 ments, thus making the most of opportunity and 
 fine weather. Evan has made many little garden 
 improvements ; for to him as well as father, vacation
 
 314 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 idleness is merely a change from mental to physical 
 employment. 
 
 The wild walk beyond the sun garden offered the 
 greatest possibilities, and it is chiefly there that he 
 has spent his strength, sometimes varying this work 
 by training our new horse in side-saddle docility. 
 This penchant of Evan for horse training was the 
 primary cause of depriving the Church of his ser 
 vices. In his youth, when on a probationary visit 
 to his uncle, the Dean, he had escaped daily to a 
 nearby race course, and there ingratiated himself so 
 thoroughly with the stable men that he was allowed 
 to exercise an especially cantankerous mare. He was 
 thus surprised by His Reverence when handling a 
 mount in an exceedingly scientific and jockey fied 
 manner, and sent home in disgrace. 
 
 The wild walk born of the cowpath is either 
 arched by trees or screened by bushes for the greater 
 part of its length. In one place, however, for a space 
 of some twenty yards it crosses the open field, giving 
 a view of cultivated farmland below that mars the 
 effect of wildness and seclusion. 
 
 To overcome this defect, Evan, with Bertie's aid in 
 post setting, has made the framework of a sort of 
 arbour that screens the walk completely. It is not 
 of set and formal lattice work like the old rose
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 315 
 
 arbour, for its posts, though nearly of the same 
 height, are no two of the same size or distance apart, 
 being slim trees birch, cedar, maple, tulip, pine, 
 and chestnut, with the bark left on. These he has 
 bound together with the woody vines of wild grapes 
 from the grove above the house, where they reach 
 up sometimes thirty or forty feet into the trees, with 
 out branching, and then loop and twist themselves 
 into huge grotesque knots. An ox yoke, found in 
 an old barn, and venerable with lichens, makes the 
 entering lintel of the roof, also woven of grape vine 
 and curved branches. 
 
 Already the effect is of a path cut trail-fashion 
 through thickset trees, and when to complete the 
 plan it shall be covered with native vines meshed 
 carefully in and out, bittersweet, clematis, coral 
 honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, frost grapes, bind 
 weed, climbing hemp, wild yam, and even catbriar, 
 it will be quite unique, a bit of wild "pleached 
 alley " conceived and born in the garden of a 
 commuter's wife. 
 
 The September garden has flowers all its own that 
 have more of the personality that mark those of May 
 and early June.
 
 316 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 The sweet peas have done their work ; that is, 
 those of the trellised vines of the long walk. In July, 
 after a heavy rain, I planted a row of the dwarf pink 
 and white Blanche Ferry as an experiment, just as 
 we use dwarf peas in the vegetable garden for 
 autumn bearing, and they are now full of buds break 
 ing into bloom, though the flowers are not so large as 
 those of the earlier season. 
 
 I have never been successful in sowing the tall 
 sweet peas in succession for autumn blooming, for 
 they are of deliberate growth, and hot weather wastes 
 their vitality in feverish effort. This, to be sure, has 
 been an exceptionally equable season, and rather the 
 exception than the rule. I like to think it is a sort 
 of golden jubilee to welcome me home to my own 
 again. Even Blanche Ferry might have dried up or 
 died from mildew if August had been either wholly 
 dry or rent with battering thunder storms, as I have 
 known to be the case. Let every one who makes 
 garden plans frequently insert the letters C. P. in 
 them as a reminder, the same standing for climate 
 permitting. 
 
 The Margaret carnations are now blooming as 
 freely as border pinks, and with the summer roses 
 give the table a fragrant bouquet once more. Helio 
 trope is still in profusion, also the mignonette that
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 317 
 
 had a half-shady exposure. The wall flowers are 
 growing more bushy and profuse, while the last plant 
 ing of gladioli, by chance wholly lacking in pink tints, 
 is striving to rival nasturtiums and salvia in colour. 
 
 The white panicled-flowered clematis, though in its 
 first year, is covering the end of the honeysuckle 
 wall, where it is entrenched, with snow. Yet the 
 distinctive character of the September garden is to 
 be found in two species that divide the honours of 
 the month equally between them, the asters and 
 the Dahlias, once represented only by the neat but 
 rigid quilled species that have now been hybridized 
 into a dozen graceful forms and exquisite tints. 
 Though the cactus type of Dahlia is the most interest 
 ing and individual, the long-stemmed single varieties 
 are very graceful, and when gathered are more amena 
 ble to arrangement, while the large quilled rosettes 
 of splendid winey crimson and purple colours seem 
 in their turn unmatchable ; their velvet texture is the 
 garden's autumn robe donned at the first thought of 
 colder weather. 
 
 I have tried the experiment of fastening my Dahlias 
 against a low trellis such as supports the nasturtiums 
 and sweet peas, and it is very satisfactory. Such 
 succulent plants are likely to be broken down and 
 bereft of many branches if merely secured to a stake.
 
 3i8 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 But in this way the shoots may be pulled through 
 the wires, and a sightly hedge is the result, while 
 the support is high and strong enough to let me 
 cover the plants nightly with light-weight unbleached 
 cotton, if frost threatens too early. 
 
 If asters like a garden, they thrive mightily ; if not, 
 they are the most ungrateful of annuals. They must 
 have deep, cool soil which ants have never inhabited 
 or from which they have been banished, else at the 
 very moment when they should bloom, they wither 
 away almost in a single night. When the plant is 
 pulled up to find the cause, a swarm of white lice 
 will be found feeding upon the root, these being the 
 cows that supply milk to the ant nursery, and always 
 plentiful in ant colonies. 
 
 Asters may be had in all shades of colour except, I 
 think, the three distinct primaries, true vermilion, 
 blue, and yellow, in this following the balsams, save 
 that these last possess a real scarlet. 
 
 To these September flowers must be added the 
 waxy white day lily (funkia subcordatd), a light, 
 scattering, second blooming of many hardy June 
 plants such as larkspurs; the late phloxes and a 
 slender sheaf of hybrid perpetual roses, though in
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 319 
 
 our soil at this time they yield only flat, semi- 
 double flowers of poor quality. The hybrid teas are 
 our only satisfactory hardy autumn-blooming roses. 
 
 Dora Penfield has come and gone, staying not one 
 week, but two. In fact, her visit was the cause of 
 my neglect of you, my Garden Boke, during the last 
 half of August. Now I will make up for it by telling 
 you about her, for you are discreet, having ears and 
 no lips. I've felt so pent up and conscious ever since 
 she made me her unwilling confidante ; for though I 
 gave and was asked for no promises of secrecy, I feel 
 a reserve altogether new to me, and that I ought 
 not to tell Evan even, which is very uncomfortable, 
 for he is too wholesomely direct to sympathize. 
 Later I may hint of it to father, however; for he 
 must often come in contact with her at the hospital, 
 and may need to understand her peculiar attitude 
 and moods. Why she told me so much about her 
 life I cannot imagine, unless she felt that she must 
 have the relief of speech, and seeing the perfect 
 understanding between Evan and me, thought that 
 I of necessity must sympathize with her. So I do. 
 But no, pity is the word; for the darkness of her 
 life, father says, as in the case of so many he meets,
 
 320 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 comes from the fact that she has stood, as it were, 
 in her own shadow, and tried to manage nature. 
 
 I think that poor Dora must have been born to 
 or inherited a certain vein of ill luck that she has 
 either had too much self-complacency to recognize 
 or else lacked the force to forestall. According to 
 her own fragmentary account, which I have pieced 
 together by intuition, from her girlhood, when her 
 parents died leaving her rich as money is reckoned 
 in the country, mischance continually fell upon her in 
 ways for which she denied all responsibility. She is, 
 in fact, the sort of woman who is always overtaken 
 by a shower when she goes out in her best clothes. 
 
 She went to college, and seems to have obtained 
 a feeling of superiority over her less ambitious sis 
 ters, instead of breadth of vision and culture. Next, 
 she travelled abroad awhile with some college 
 friends, and, on her return, opened her old home, 
 which she improved, having one gift, the rare skill 
 that knows how to renew without making the new 
 ness apparent. 
 
 For several years she led a self-satisfactory life, 
 being a leader of a small social procession, ready 
 in charity and much flattered and consulted. Then 
 fate stepped in and began to meddle with the even 
 fabric of her life, and as she thinks, tangle the skein
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 321 
 
 and mismatch its colour. For to a vague thing to 
 which, when kind, she referred as Providence, and 
 when harsh, Fate, she attributes all events, with the 
 superstition of Delia or Mrs. Mullins, and never 
 arraigns herself for errors or deems her judgments 
 impeachable. 
 
 Fate came a-wooing in the form of the serious 
 and really fine-looking young doctor of the hospi 
 tal, upon whom at the time the Village Liar fixed 
 her suspicions. For a year Dora and he were 
 much together. It was really the first time that 
 she, in her narrow, suburban life, had come under 
 the influence of a man evidently much more than 
 her equal, and near her own age, she being, perhaps, 
 two years his senior. 
 
 She justified the acquaintance to herself and jug 
 gled with its reality by calling it friendship. He 
 did not, and the moment that he had secured a 
 footing on the professional ladder, a good opening 
 in a distant city, he told her in all sincerity that 
 he now might ask her for the promise that it would 
 have been selfish and one-sided to have expected 
 before; he being frank and simple-minded, never 
 for a moment doubted that she was as single- 
 hearted as he himself. 
 
 She really did love him, that is, as far as she 
 y
 
 322 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 knew how, the shadow of self always keeping well 
 between ; but she resented his taking her love for 
 granted, though she had been telling it by eye and 
 accent for many months. She was not yet proud 
 of him, though she meant to marry him, but the 
 shadow lay heavily ; for whether she realized it or 
 not, she did not care to leave her pedestal to be 
 come either the betrothed or the wife of a man as 
 yet unknown. She fenced to gain time, using the 
 well-worn subterfuge, half argument, half coquetry, 
 saying "to bind him before his way was made 
 might retard his progress she was too old for 
 him, he would meet younger, prettier faces, and out 
 grow her their friendship was intellectual, while a 
 doctor needed heart more than head in a wife." 
 
 Then seeing that he stood white and aghast, suf 
 fering but making no protest, she grew angry, and 
 told him hotly that in two years' time the space 
 that he asked her to wait for him he would prob 
 ably thank her for the advice, never dreaming that 
 he would take her seriously. He assented humbly, 
 only asking if he might write to her in the interval. 
 She said, " Yes, if you will never mention love or 
 marriage until two years are over," not even then 
 expecting that she would be taken at her word. 
 
 He went to his new post; a letter or two came,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 323 
 
 detailed and full of his professional work. Restless 
 and miserable, but still keeping rigidly to her ped 
 estal, she went abroad, ostensibly to study art, 
 but really to follow the great procession who wander 
 aimlessly about, guide-book in hand, for various 
 reasons trying to kill time out of eye-shot of the 
 critical. 
 
 Every other week letters were exchanged, and 
 in order to match his professional enthusiasm in 
 kind, Dora dropped the easy gossip of travel, visited 
 the hospitals wherever she went, grew technical, 
 and dilated upon the splendid career offered women 
 through trained nursing, hinting idly that she felt 
 strongly drawn to make the vocation her own. 
 
 When two years had nearly passed, she turned 
 homeward in an apparently leisurely sort of way 
 without special significance. But in reality she was 
 feverishly impatient, and her trunk contained many 
 of the pretty things that make up bridal- finery. 
 When she arrived and was well rested, she sent Him 
 (for she thought the word in capitals now) a note to 
 say at what hotel she was stopping, and that she 
 was "only passing through the city on her way 
 home" nothing more. 
 
 He came at once with honest eagerness. A 
 lover would have noticed that it was two years
 
 324 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 to a day since they had parted, but he only re 
 garded the time approximately, took both her 
 hands, and looked her squarely in the face as he 
 told her how well she looked, and that as the for 
 bidden time for speaking of himself was over, he 
 must be selfish. 
 
 He thanked her for her patient friendship, and 
 for her wise advice, saying that even two 
 years before she had known him better than he 
 himself had done. He told of his success and 
 that what she had said had all proved true. He 
 now realized that a physician from his anxious 
 life did not need a helpmeet of the head as much 
 as of the heart, and that he was just betrothed to 
 the daughter of his senior, a wholesome, fresh 
 young girl, whom she would love and who carried 
 restfulness in her very laugh. No one knew it yet, 
 as he wished Dora to be the first to hear the news, 
 and give her good wishes to them both. 
 
 He said that in another year or two he expected 
 to have a hospital for children in connection with 
 his practice, and that as Dora seemed deliberately to 
 have chosen to adopt the vocation of a nurse, what 
 would be more fitting than that she should have 
 charge of it! 
 
 Did you ever dream of such a tangle, you dear.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 325 
 
 straight-forward, open-paged Garden Boke? Tell 
 me who was to blame, the man or the woman? 
 I fear me it was the silly, selfish woman. The 
 man was simply attracted by an older woman, as 
 many are, lacked imagination, did as he was told, 
 found his mistake, and shifted Dora to a maternal, 
 cousinly place in his regard as she had bid, and 
 thought all well. If it turned out to his own advan 
 tage, who can blame him ? Dora would not have 
 been a good doctor's wife. She is too rigid. I 
 am sure that she would have objected to extra or 
 irregular meals, insisted upon regulating the social 
 status patients, and had a large and prominent door 
 mat, saying, " Wipe your feet " spread down during 
 office hours. 
 
 Now having committed herself, her pride is 
 forcing her to go into training for a profession 
 she only half likes ; and I truly believe that the ill 
 luck that still clings, combined with the old New 
 England disease of unnecessary self-abnegation, 
 which father says is a curse left by the witches 
 the Puritans burned, will lead her eventually to go 
 to the children's hospital, and thus literally keep 
 a wound from healing by rubbing salt in it. 
 
 Ah, me ! suppose I had hesitated about going 
 to England with Evan and put him off. Would
 
 326 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 he have waited and come back ? Of course he 
 would, but then I'm glad I didn't. What non 
 sense I'm thinking. Evan says that the difficulty 
 with women is that they take everything person 
 ally, and thereby are often unnecessarily tormented, 
 which is perfectly true. 
 
 September 20. Twice lately father and Evan 
 have been over the hills to Chain Lakes, fishing 
 for black bass, and had great sport, father getting 
 the most exercise, and Evan the most fish. Father 
 is classic and conservative, and used artificial flies, 
 while Evan took a choice collection of small toads, 
 newts, locusts, and big grasshoppers, which evidently 
 were more attractive. Yesterday I went with them, 
 riding the newly trained horse, who proved com 
 fortably meek, while the men each took one of the 
 grays. 
 
 Ah, the colour of the September hills ! Earlier 
 in the season we look for form, detail, fragrance. 
 Now colour seems to fill the eye, and we store 
 it away against the time of neutral tints. The 
 trees were as solidly green as in July, only here 
 and there a Virginia creeper winding through 
 them like a gay ribbon, while the fragrance of wild
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 327 
 
 grapes sunning upon the stone fences was wafted 
 everywhere. The colour followed the ground; Joe 
 Pye and goldenrod surging in great waves across 
 the open, settling in shoulder-deep pools in the 
 hollows and breaking into a golden spray of giant 
 sunflowers over the fences and against the wood 
 edges. 
 
 The dwarf sumachs were beginning to glow like 
 live coals on the drier hills, and here and there the 
 cardinal flower followed a brook out to the road,, 
 but the prevailing colour was the peculiar purplish 
 pink and gold the tint that heather, gorse, and 
 broom give to the English moors and Scottish hills. 
 So many people go out and admire the more gaudy 
 autumn leaf reds and yellows, and never seem to 
 notice this intermediate stage between summer and 
 autumn. The fishing proved too intricate for even 
 short petticoats, so I amused myself by following a 
 number of tempting wood trails on horseback, and 
 saw in the course of the morning, much to father's 
 delight, samples of our trio of game birds, wood 
 cock, quail, and ruffed-grouse all quite tame and 
 seemingly conscious of the protection of the close 
 season. They had better be on guard, however; 
 in ten days or so fishing rods will be put to bed 
 and guns will appear. Meanwhile, the local sporting
 
 328 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 element goes out at night semi-weekly to train the 
 young hounds to trail and locate fox holes for the 
 real hunting later on. 
 
 Evan went last week, taking Bugle and Tally-ho. 
 He didn't come home until after two in the morn 
 ing, tired but happy, four promising dens having 
 been located. The hounds were brought back 
 this morning by a farmer to whose house they had 
 gone. The old dogs lead, and the young follow 
 with some of the huntsmen afoot, while the others, 
 especially invited guests, choose a point of vantage 
 and listen to the music of the full cry as the course 
 winds in and out, almost every owner recognizing the 
 voice of his own dog. When the practice is over, a 
 midnight supper is eaten at the rallying point, and 
 the pack divided, each going home with his owner. 
 Of course many of the young dogs get off on 
 crossed trails and rabbit tracks and keep on run 
 ning. 
 
 These, according to local etiquette, are always 
 returned by the first to find them, the tariff being 
 a dollar per dog, irrespective of distance travelled. 
 Of course the whole thing would seem very primi 
 tive to the costumed chasers of tame foxes and 
 aniseed bags, but it is the custom here, and as it 
 meets the people's needs, what would you have ?
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 329 
 
 I used to go on these trials, and I'm going again 
 next week. The mad baying of the hounds over 
 the hills and the break to full cry is as stimulating 
 as martial music. As to seeing the fox killed, that 
 is another thing, a necessary act, but not for the 
 sight of Barbara. 
 
 September 27. I have left a number of plants to 
 go to seed in the garden in spite of the ragged air 
 they lend, for the sake of the birds they attract. 
 The composite flowers are the favourites, coreopsis, 
 zinnias, asters, rudbeckias. This morning a line of 
 tall Russian sunflowers that head the vegetable 
 garden seemed fairly alive with the darling black- 
 capped goldfinches, who swung to and fro, perform 
 ing all sorts of trapeze feats, as they picked out the 
 seeds, like pins from a cushion, all the while giving 
 their canary-like call. 
 
 Flower form is becoming indistinct; the later 
 blooms are less articulate. The anemone Japonica 
 is the single exception that upholds springlike purity 
 of shape and whiteness among the ragged, twisted, 
 or primly tufted October chrysanthemums. 
 
 The colour influence of flowers upon the mind 
 has never before appealed to me as it has this
 
 330 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 season. For many months I have gathered and 
 arranged flowers of all kinds in all ways, giving 
 especial thought and love to the decoration of the 
 table, striving to group the flowers according to 
 their meaning as well as to the day and meal. 
 
 Of this one thing I am sure, that the rarest 
 colours are those that are least effective by them 
 selves. Take blue, for example. We have fewer 
 true blue garden flowers than any others lobelias, 
 centaurea, larkspur, a lily or two, forget-me-nots, lu 
 pins, scillas, hyacinths, and a few more, but to be 
 effective they need white as a foil. My blue alcove 
 would have been dull indeed but for an edging of 
 white candytuft, while the loops and spires of lark 
 spur seemed out of place amid its green foliage until 
 an underlying mass of white feverfew came in bloom 
 and made a setting. The beauty of a sapphire is 
 unrevealed until it is mated with a diamond. 
 
 If the cultivated garden at any time does not 
 yield flowers of the right expressiveness for the 
 flower language of the table, the wild garden will 
 always supplement it. All summer I have striven 
 to have the breakfast flowers more delicate and of 
 paler colours than those for the later, heavier meals. 
 In May white narcissi with their own foliage in a 
 slender green vase at breakfast, rich tulips in a
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 331 
 
 solid hued bowl at dinner. In June, pink and white 
 rose sprays well mingled with ferns at breakfast, 
 the bowl of gorgeous crimson and rich pink roses 
 garlanded with honeysuckle for dinner. The 
 trouble is very slight, for each arrangement will 
 serve two days. 
 
 In July and August water-lilies floating close 
 together in a flat glass dish of conventional lotus 
 shape were my morning motive; of course they 
 closed at noon. These only required renewing 
 semi-weekly, if I was careful to gather the freshly 
 opened flowers with stamens thrown widely back 
 to tell of their youth. 
 
 In June, too, the common field daisies almost 
 rivalled the rose in usefulness, combining with 
 white and shell-pink poppies in the morning, while 
 what could be more fitting at midday than an old- 
 time blue jar filled with a bouquet of daisies and 
 scarlet poppies edged with ribbon grass? 
 
 The colour change can thus be rung endlessly, 
 every day and every mood suggesting variations ; 
 and so many lovely blossoms close at noon that 
 they must make their bow at breakfast table or 
 not at all, while others are only wide awake at night. 
 
 I wondered if my men noticed this flower whim 
 of mine, for they said nothing. But then, men
 
 332 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 are more prone to speak of what they dislike, and 
 quietly absorb the likable. One intense August 
 morning that promised a day of the dizzy heat of 
 which the locust sings, I discovered that the flowers 
 picked the day before were drooping and pitiful ; so 
 hurrying down the wild walk, I gathered a great 
 handful of ferns, the hay-scented, lady ferns and 
 maidenhair, to which the heavy moisture of the 
 night still clung, and grouping them hastily in one 
 of my frosted vases, set them on the table at the 
 moment that Evan came in. 
 
 " How did you know that my head aches to-day ? " 
 he asked, as his eyes rested on the bit of wood cool 
 ness. " Nasturtiums would have positively irritated 
 me this morning; but then, your breakfast flowers 
 are always restful, Barbara." 
 
 So he has recognized it all along ! Dear, blessed, 
 stupid men, why don't you realize what your slight 
 est word of praise is worth to those who love you ? 
 I've waited quite three months for those few words. 
 By the same token, for it's growing cold this after 
 noon, I must make haste to gather a great jar of 
 Dahlias and red geraniums with their leaves, to sup 
 plement the hearth fire we shall have at dinner time, 
 keeping one ruby velvet flower for my hair. 
 
 Effie has brought in the tea, and said, " Mrs.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 333 
 
 Corkle bids me say that she would like to speak 
 private with you and Mr. Evan, and she may." 
 
 What can it be ? Are the bread lessons too diffi 
 cult for her to master? Is it the "'ome-brewed " 
 again, or can she be wishing to go back to Eng 
 land when the year is up ? I thought that she had 
 seemed happier since Effie's coming. Six months 
 ago I should have welcomed this, but not now. 
 There is a great deal of home comfort concealed 
 about Martha Corkle, if only she and her environ 
 ment were not somewhat at odds.
 
 XVII 
 
 SEPTEMBER 
 
 THE APOTHEOSIS OF MARTHA CORKLE 
 
 September 28. Can it possibly be only twenty- 
 four hours since I closed my Garden Boke in haste, 
 and left it on the window seat ? Since the after 
 noons have become cooler, close before dusk I find 
 myself lounging or writing in my watch tower, as 
 Evan calls the latticed window. Through its dia 
 mond panes the garden landscape separates itself 
 into miniatures personal and intimate, which by the 
 opening of the casement merge again to one broad 
 picture. 
 
 Father came home last evening a little after 
 dark, which is now before six. He had been to a 
 consultation a half-day's drive away, but instead of 
 seeming worried or tired he was laughing heartily 
 as he opened the door, which hilarity, upon seeing 
 me, he subdued to an exceedingly quizzical expres 
 sion about the nose, such as his face wears at times 
 of special content. The last demonstration of this 
 
 334
 
 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 335 
 
 kind happened several weeks ago, when at the end 
 of a discussion with one of his book-mad friends 
 upon the subject of the misnamed and impossible 
 portraits, which had proved snares in the path of 
 their extra illustrating, the Dominie came hurrying 
 back in great excitement to show that he had picked 
 up a portrait of Nicholas Culpepper, hitherto unget- 
 table, the which father soon proved conclusively to 
 be that of Rene Descartes misnamed ! 
 
 Upon my telling father of Martha's request for 
 an interview in private, he only laughed the harder, 
 while Evan took the matter quite indifferently, 
 though I could see that he writhed a little at the 
 idea of a first experience in coming face to face 
 with an uncertain domestic discussion. 
 
 He seemed to linger an unusual time over his 
 coffee, and I was obliged fairly to drag him into 
 the den to finish his cigar, while father retreated 
 to the study, his eyes shining with mischief, and 
 closed the door in a very ostentatious manner. 
 
 Evan went to his desk, but drummed with his 
 fingers instead of writing; I tried two chairs, and 
 finally curled up in the ingle nook, divided between 
 anxiety and curiosity. 
 
 Presently we heard Martha's firm tread come 
 down the hall. Stumbling over Bluff and Lark,
 
 336 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 who as usual were lying back to back halfway 
 between the doors of den and study, she made a 
 somewhat sudden entrance without knocking; the 
 jar, of course, accounting for her flushed face. 
 
 We were both aware of a difference in her dress, 
 but did not dare exchange glances. The usual 
 starched and spotless apron was lacking; she wore 
 her Sunday cashmere with cuffs and turnover collar 
 of white crocheted lace, fastened by a large brooch 
 containing a Jubilee portrait of the Queen ; while 
 upon her sleekly brushed black hair that was almost 
 guiltless of gray, rested a lace cap of staunch Brit 
 ish build ornamented with a spray of red roses that 
 formed a quivering bowsprit in the front. 
 
 She did not curtsy as usual; she did not smile. 
 Instinctively I drew a chair close to Evan's, while 
 he asked Martha to be seated. 
 
 "An' thank you kindly, Mr. Evan," she replied, 
 moistening her lips, that seemed glued together, 
 "but I feel easier afoot and firmer-like for what I 
 'as to say." 
 
 " Why, whatever is the matter ? " said Evan, 
 kindly, rising and going toward her; for great 
 beads of sweat stood on her forehead and she 
 clasped and unclasped her hands continually. "Ill 
 news from home, or are you unhappy over here?"
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 337 
 
 "Worse than that, Mr. Evan, and I'm shamefaced 
 to tell it. I'm going to marry Timothy Saunders ! " 
 
 " Good Lord ! " cried Evan, checking a long- 
 drawn whistle with great effort. 
 
 " Mr. Evan, sir, it's not that bad as you need 
 should speak so, I'm sure! I'm not fifty-two till 
 come last Guy Fawkes eve, and many an older 
 marries. My mother's sister Janet she took her 
 second when turning sixty and her third full five 
 years later." 
 
 " It's not you, Martha," said Evan, pulling himself 
 together, and getting his laughing muscles well under 
 control. " I've often wondered, with your face and 
 figure, that you haven't married. In fact, once when 
 I was six years old and you gave me a whole queen 
 cake for not telling when I got a black eye in a fight 
 with the butcher's boy, who was your cousin's son, I 
 seriously thought of marrying you myself." 
 
 " But you was always so considerate-like, Mr. 
 Evan," Martha interrupted, dropping her stiffness 
 and a curtsy at the same time. 
 
 " It's Crumpled Tim I'm thinking of," continued 
 Evan. " He's good as gold, but not the sort of man 
 I should think would take your fancy, Martha.. He's 
 lopsided and growing rheumatic ; besides, he has a 
 poor opinion of women. He has often said when 
 z
 
 338 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 I've asked the cause, ' Maister Evan, I'm done on 
 weemin. They're a' that feekle and flutterin' that a 
 mon can neersomever ken where they'll licht next. 
 I'm weel cleart o' them.' " 
 
 " Good as gold is a true sayin', Mr. Evan, and that 
 without references to the eight hundred pounds he's 
 got in bank from twenty years' service. His rheu 
 matics is much improved since I made up those 
 proper flannels ; 'tis the hawful shrinkin' of the others 
 (no one to wash them thinkin' like) that's had much 
 to do with crumplin' his rigger ; not that I hold it bad, 
 legs and arms all bein' there, but a mite disarranged, 
 as it were. As for women bein' changeful, they 
 generally his so, and worse; and how could he halter 
 his mind until he'd seen different? Has you can 
 certify, Mr. Evan, and Mrs., too, I never flutters, and 
 where I puts down my foot, there I stands." 
 
 " Does Tim know that you are going to marry 
 him ? " asked Evan, to my horror, for I expected that 
 Martha would retire in high dudgeon, and we should 
 altogether miss the dramatic particulars. But she 
 was too desperately in earnest to heed his meaning. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Evan, I told him this day come twelve 
 of the clock when, lackin' 'ome-brewed, I give him a 
 cup o' broth to hearten him for goin' across country 
 with the doctor to a conversation or a crowner's quest
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 339 
 
 or sumat. He standin' outside my window where the 
 geraniums be, me inside, and to token it we both is 
 now wearin' a flower, chance he hasn't lost his in the 
 jolting." And Martha pointed to a red geranium sur 
 rounded by a tuft of parsley that garnished her 
 belt 
 
 " Sit down and tell us all about it," chuckled Evan, 
 fairly pulling her into a chair with a genial determi 
 nation that was infectious. "It's all in the family, 
 you know." 
 
 "Yes, that it is, and who else should I tell? 
 And what's the good of having news an' ye must 
 coop it? It's like cold veal pie upon the chest for 
 supper, the same being over old, under done, and 
 dry o' gravy. 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Evan, and Mrs. too, not to be partial, 
 Tim'thy Saunders didn't have an idea o' marryin', 
 and though ailin', didn't know of what, so he had to be 
 told, that he had ; and me knowin', I had to take the 
 leadin', bein' my plain duty to a fellow creature, so to 
 speak. 
 
 "Two months gone Tim'thy fell backward in his 
 eatin', for they fry meat to rags up at the farm 
 he bides at. He'd come outside my window when I 
 was dishin' stew, dressin' kidneys, or turnin' out a 
 loaf, and sniff and breathe heavy like, and say, ' Mrs.
 
 340 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 Corkle, they don't handle victuals 'ere like they did 
 at 'ome. E'en the mouthful o' bread rises to the 
 nose and leaves the belly empty.' 
 
 "There are some, 'owsomever, that doesn't like 
 durable bread, so to speak, tastes differin'." 
 
 I could feel the scorn wave settling on my guilty 
 head, but Martha never paused. 
 
 "It's terribly piteous to 'ear a man sigh on 
 account of poor victuals, and it shook my vitals. So 
 now and again I offered him a tit-bit, knowin' you'd 
 not object, and he always eat them hearty. 
 
 "Next I noticed he'd sit in the stable at night, 
 his 'ead on his arms ; and the same bein' lonesome 
 and unhealthful, I bid him be free of the settin' 
 room, and have a game with Eliza and Delia, me 
 mindin' my needle that he needn't think I was 
 wishful o' the sight of him. 
 
 "Then one day when he flung down his coat 
 to take in some firm', I minded it lacked every 
 button, and his braces was tied up with strings, 
 the same which when I took notice of he turned 
 very distant and sour and drew a long sigh which 
 would start one a-shiverin'. 
 
 " So it dragged along, and never a good word he 
 said in return for the flannels which I gave on your 
 hand, Mrs. Evan, but just hintin' the sewin' was
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 341 
 
 mine, only growling out that one woman is tor- 
 mentsome enough, but two's like the fire that never 
 quenches. 
 
 " He hadn't passed a word with me since Sunday, 
 when to-day, me workin' by the window, he stops 
 and stands glowerin' in. I passes him the cup o' 
 broth, which he didn't touch at first till I called out, 
 for it burned my fingers ; and when he did, his hand 
 shook till some spilled over. 
 
 " ' Whatever ails ye, man ? ' I calls, me grabbin' 
 to catch it, bein' inside pantry china that I'd 
 snatched up heedless. 
 
 " ' I dinna ken, Martha Corkle, unless it's death 
 a-beckonin' me,' he said most doleful. Then I seed 
 my duty plain, which I never shirks, and I up and 
 says, ' Timothy Saunders, I know what ails you ; it 
 ain't death, it's marriage ! You needs a home to sit 
 in after hours, and good cooked victuals, and buttons 
 instead o' strings, and roomy flannels ; you needs a 
 sip o' hot Scotch well sweetened of a winter night, 
 and a fire o' yer own to take it by, shut from remark. 
 Tim'thy Saunders, you needs 'Ome Brewed ! You 
 needs a wife ! ' 
 
 " ' It may be as you say, Martha Corkle,' he 
 says, meek-like, 'but there's not one as would take 
 Crumpled Tim, lest to make sport of him.'
 
 342 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " ' God guide you,' said I, ' but is your pate thick 
 as a Christmas pudding ? Don't you know I'm ailin', 
 too, for need o' a man to do all those same things 
 for ? I'm goin' to marry you, Timothy Saunders ! ' 
 and says he, ' If ye will, ye will, and it's no for me to 
 contradict ye, Martha Corkle ; and I'll go further to 
 say I'm weel content.' 
 
 " Now wasn't that just grand o' him, Mr. Evan, 
 and Mrs., too, with no disrespect intended? I 
 trowed he'd need more convincin' and circum- 
 ventin'. 
 
 "With that he fetched a grand, loud laugh, and 
 give his word, and, Mrs. Evan, I'm sad to tell that 
 china cup is broke! clean parted, and I've made 
 bold to say we each has kept a half ! " 
 
 Martha paused for breath, while Evan shook her 
 hand and poured out somewhat incoherent words 
 mingled with compliments on her generalship. 
 
 A moment served her for recuperation, and she 
 began anew in answer to Evan's statement that, 
 as she had married before, she probably knew her 
 own mind, which was an advantage. 
 
 " Before has no concern in the matter, Mr. Evan, 
 for a body, man or woman, hits the real marriage 
 but onct ; gin it be first or last, there's only reely one. 
 My own mother hadn't her own mind till her third,
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 343 
 
 and her step-aunt's brother was never rightly suited 
 till his fourth, and he over seventy. 
 
 "I am lucky, as ye say, Mr. Evan, to get my 
 choice, early in life, as it were, which might pass 
 for the first, as Corkle, though fairish while he 
 lasted, wasn't o' my choosin', it bein' brought 
 about by the cattle-show and cousins, with me too 
 tender-hearted to say no." 
 
 " When are you to marry Timothy ? " I ven 
 tured, with visions of domestic change. 
 
 "Two weeks come Wednesday, if it's approved, 
 Mrs. Evan. I worked that all hout in my mind 
 before I spoke to Tim'thy. An' the doctor's agree 
 able, we could take up house in the floor by the 
 stables for the time, the same bein' quite a cottage, 
 havin' as good a settin' room as needed, k" cleaned 
 well and freshened up a bit with a red rose paper. 
 I've told myself many a time these years that if I'd 
 ever a settin' room again, it's red roses I'd choose. 
 
 "There's a good bit o' unused meadow on the 
 north side where I could raise fowls and a goose 
 or two ; please Heaven, I'll have one fatted o' me 
 own next Michaelmas, and spread the linen to 
 bleach. There's no such pleasure as doin' laundry 
 when you've the time to coax it clean, so to 
 speak."
 
 344 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 " Laundry ? what laundry ? " I asked, amazed. 
 
 "Why, yours and the master's and the doctor's, 
 to be sure. I've rattled on that heedless that I've 
 brought it out end first. I thought, and no disre 
 spect intended, Mr. and Mrs. Evan both, that 
 Eliza could go back to cookin', her bread bein' 
 approved, if her kidneys is as yet underdone and 
 bacon flabby, while I'd handle the laundry quite 
 away and private, besides lending a hand, as one 
 of the tenantry might, with jam and Christmas 
 puddings ! " 
 
 " Good Old Reliable ! " exclaimed Evan, patting 
 Martha on the back; while I do not blush, dear 
 Garden Boke, to say that, braving an eye poke from 
 the red rose, I kissed her, the hereditary servant 
 with our comfort inseparable from her own. This 
 act, however, she promptly discounted by saying 
 with a suspicious sniff : 
 
 "Thank ye kindly both. One aint hexactly 
 responsible for acts, when hexcited by talk of 
 weddin's. For Erne she's that pleased she's near 
 forgot her manners, too, on account of me asking her 
 to be bridesmaid, which belonging to his family is suit 
 able, and Timothy'll give her a new gown to wear, 
 her savin's bein' small, and those she brought from 
 'ome bein' drawn too tight in the front o' the body."
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 345 
 
 Exit Martha. Enter father, so suddenly that he 
 was self-convicted of eaves-dropping, and tumbling 
 into a chair, rocked with laughter. 
 
 " Tim told me this afternoon," he gasped. 
 " ' Doctor,' he said, ' Martha Corkle's going to 
 marry me. She asked me this morning.' But he 
 put it differently as to preliminaries. It seems that 
 he has admired Martha since the day we set the sun 
 dial, but in his youth, having been jilted by a girl 
 the day they were to marry, he left his home after 
 swearing ' by the hearthstone,' which he considers an 
 inviolable oath, never to ask another woman to be 
 his wife. 
 
 " He was greatly bothered, and finally resolved 
 that he'd pine and mope, and perchance work upon 
 her pity ; and I don't know which pleases him most, 
 the circumvention, as he thinks, or the winning of 
 Martha." 
 
 This insight from Crumpled Tim, the woman- 
 hater ! So each one takes the credit for the result. 
 
 " Which," added father, blowing his nose vigor 
 ously, " I believe to be a love match to the core, in 
 spite of the contrariety of the principals. 
 
 " And what do you suppose Tim asked of me as 
 ' a token ' for his housekeeping but The Orphan ! 
 
 " ' Doctor,' he said, a comical look spreading over
 
 346 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 his features, ' a woman's a good thing, and a dog's 
 anither, and I'm weel suited ter baith in the same 
 year. Gin a year agone, I'd an ill word for the 
 wan and a kick for the ither.' " 
 
 "Barbara," said Evan after a moment's silence, 
 "did I not say that the question of the 'home 
 brewed ' would probably adjust itself ? " 
 
 This being during our three married years his 
 nearest approach to " I told you so," is additional 
 proof of Evan's superiority over his sex.
 
 XVIII 
 OCTOBER 
 
 THE YEAR'S MIND 
 
 October 1 8. The first real frost came to the garden 
 last night, though for two weeks past the hoar has 
 silvered the lowlands at every sunrise. The helio 
 trope hangs its blackened head, and the vigorous nas 
 turtiums are spilling their sap as the season's sacrifice. 
 A few verbenas, Margaret carnations, and rosebuds 
 alone remain of the summer garden. The Dahlias, 
 owing to protection, have gained a few days' reprieve, 
 but their quality is impaired. After a hard frost all 
 flowers droop when taken indoors, except the hardy 
 old-time chrysanthemums, whose red, yellow, white, 
 and tawny buttons seldom fail to outlast the month. 
 
 The pit is finished, and comfortably ensconced in 
 it are the various cuttings and the tea roses, together 
 with the first instalment of potted bulbs for winter 
 blooming. This year I am trying Bermuda Easter 
 lilies as house plants, having prepared a dozen pots 
 of large bulbs that after being buried will evolute 
 
 347
 
 348 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 gradually through the pit to the den windows. The 
 violets are quite settled in their frames, and to-day 
 Evan is wearing some in his buttonhole. 
 
 Frost is never welcome, and yet without it one 
 would lack the courage to destroy and regulate the 
 garden for its winter sleeping season. Frost bids us 
 pause and retrospect, giving us time to note the 
 difference between the good and illy planned before 
 snow obliterates the traces. For this reason October 
 is the " year's mind " of the garden, the anniversary 
 of completion. 
 
 Ah, the glitter and sparkle of the mornings and 
 the rides down to the shore and along the crisp shin 
 gle ! I never care much for the bay in season, when 
 the summer people use it for a bath-tub, or disport 
 themselves nervously in naphtha launches that fret 
 its placid surface. But when the October winds 
 have scattered these and the gulls return to circle 
 and call, then I must go to the water, for my heart 
 answers the gulls' notes with a wild cry and, like 
 them, has its time of venturous free flight. Father 
 goes with me, and often we do not speak a word 
 after the lighthouse boat answers our signal, but sit 
 and watch the water slip off the oars, in the complete 
 companionship of silence. 
 
 Walks, too, there are, long walks to the hill country
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 349 
 
 both for the pleasure of motion and for ferns to add 
 to the wild garden, Evan toiling home with a well- 
 filled pack like a veritable pedler, while I carry a 
 fishing basket slung over the shoulder to harbour 
 more delicate plants. For alack! a bit of our 
 favourite woods is being stripped of its trees and 
 turned to a quarry, so that now any plants we 
 take cannot be reckoned despoiling, but rather a 
 rescue. 
 
 Martha and Tim were married yesterday at noon 
 in the den, and Evan gave away the bride. Martha 
 would have preferred a church wedding, but the 
 suggestion had such a paralyzing effect upon Tim 
 that she quickly abandoned it, wisely remarking : 
 
 " It may be just as well, Mrs. Evan. I'd not be 
 for pushing a dissenter too far ! " 
 
 I decorated the room with flowers from town, and 
 made a littb bower of the earliest of my potted 
 chrysanthemums. Martha looked really superb in 
 a black silk gown, Evan's gift, and a reasonably 
 decorative white bonnet of my making, for her 
 taste in headgear is not to be trusted ; while Effie 
 wore a darkish blue that mediated between her 
 fiery hair and freckles. 
 
 The dogs all came to the wedding with white 
 bows on their collars. This at Martha's request,
 
 350 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 and the Anglican Catholic did not object; while 
 The Orphan acted as best man, sitting close to Tim, 
 at whom he gazed solemnly, and wagged his tail 
 audibly whenever he responded, which Tim did 
 with full swearing vigour. 
 
 After the feast the couple were to have gone 
 down to the city for a few days, sight-seeing, but 
 the cake was hardly cut, and the bride toasted, when 
 Tim seemed to grow uneasy, and mumbling some 
 thing about Bertie's having no hand with horses, 
 edged toward the door, followed by Martha, who 
 explained in answer to questioning looks : 
 
 "Thank you all kindly, but the thought of the 
 town, 'twas quite enough for us. Tim'thy's new 
 boots bein' over small, and my silk gown that rich 
 and thick 'twere a sin to sit down in it, we'll just 
 slip over home'ards to the ' cottage ' instead, and 
 ease us of them and have a cosey cup o' tea, and no 
 disrespect intended." 
 
 Sure enough, at five o'clock Timothy was lead 
 ing the grays to the watering trough, the same as 
 usual, save only one difference : Tim, the erstwhile 
 silent, was whistling " The Campbells are Coming " 
 in at least three keys. 
 
 As Evan always cheerfully predicts, things do 
 adjust themselves, and this marriage is a distinct
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 351 
 
 gain to me. Martha in the kitchen was just a trifle 
 oppressive. Martha in the cottage will prove a sub 
 stantial guardian angel. 
 
 I said almost a year ago that if I was a ser 
 vant, I should not care to live with but one of my 
 friends, and perhaps not even in my own house 
 hold. Now I have decided that I would do the 
 latter, because I think that a masculine logic domi 
 nates here that might be worded, " Do not meas 
 ure a servant's capacity for toil by your own 
 necessities, but by the reverse order of things." 
 And though we Americans may and do lack the 
 staple comfort of hereditary service, we can do 
 much for ourselves. As father says, the great 
 knack in domestic service is to begin with good 
 stock. Earn a reputation as a mistress, and the 
 outgoing one will usually supply a "cousin" to 
 succeed her. For this reputation I am striving in a 
 comfortable, leisurely way. But I feel sure already 
 that Efne will have a cook up her sleeve if Eliza 
 and Bertie ever combine, which they doubtless will 
 in time, as they have a melancholy streak in com 
 mon which they seem greatly to enjoy. 
 
 October 19. A northeast storm following black 
 frost. The garden is laid low almost a month 
 earlier than last year. Only the red-gold wall
 
 352 THE GARDEN OF A 
 
 flowers, the last tenants in the bed of sweet 
 odours, have withstood both chill and storm and 
 given me a generous bouquet for the table, at 
 once a greeting and a good-night. A greeting for 
 the anniversary of our return, a good-night from 
 the garden. 
 
 Evan stayed at home to-day so that it should be a 
 festival for me, even if the storm howled, and he 
 has drawn me a plan for developing, not altering, 
 the wild garden, so that everything we add may 
 be of account, while I have revised my seed and 
 plant lists ; and though there is fair-day garden 
 work for a month yet, we cannot always have a 
 November like the last. Now it is the sowing time 
 in the book garden, which we intend more than 
 ever to plant with perennials. Blessed gardens of 
 flowers and of books ! Is there any phase of a 
 woman's life, either of joy or of sorrow, when you 
 will not strengthen and comfort her? 
 
 A little before nightfall, as we were sitting in 
 the ingle nook, half dreaming, half conversing with 
 out words, father came in hurriedly with a package, 
 which he took to the study. 
 
 In a moment he crossed the hall and laid some 
 thing upon the mantle-shelf under Linnaeus's por 
 trait, trusting to my curiosity to take it down.
 
 COMMUTER'S WIFE 353 
 
 "This is my gift to you, Barbara, the year's mind 
 of the home-coming. Open it, my daughter. It is 
 my treasure, and given for an heirloom." 
 
 I lifted down what seemed to be a carved wooden 
 box with a metal fastening. On taking it to the 
 light, I saw that it was an outer case with a broad 
 silver clasp, and contained a book. 
 
 The book was Dodoens's " Herball," the volume 
 of contention and introduction ! The case of apple 
 wood was made from the broken limb of the Mother 
 Tree, a narrow border of violets was carved across 
 top and bottom, while inserted on each side were 
 two small ivory miniatures. On one cover, young 
 mother the miniature that father always kept in 
 his desk was beside that of himself; the reverse 
 held those of Evan and myself, all three done with 
 out my knowledge. The clasp was engraved with 
 this legend in Old English characters. 
 
 "33lessrtj i& sfje to fofjom it is gftien to link tfje 
 nefo lofoe &ritfj tije oft." 
 
 " But after all, is there such a thing as old love ? 
 Is it not always young ? Look ! " said father, and 
 following where his finger pointed through the 
 splashed pane and across the pathway, we saw Tim 
 going home with his milk pail in one hand and a 
 chubby bunch of chrysanthemums in the other
 
 354 GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 
 
 followed by The Orphan, who, unreproved, carried 
 his muddy feet into the cottage. 
 
 Martha stood at the door, and as Tim came under 
 the porch, she took off his dripping coat, and stoop 
 ing kissed him !
 
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