and was undeniably
rotund of hips and face, the former rotundity increased by her full
skirts, the latter accentuated by her style of wearing her hair combed
back into a tight knot near the top of her head and held in place by a
huge black back-comb.

From this style of hair dressing it is evident that Granny was not a
member of any plain sect. She was, as she said, "An Evangelical, one of
the old kind yet. I can say Amen to the preacher's sermon and stand up
in prayer-meeting and tell how the Lord has blessed me."

There were some who doubted the rich blessing of which Granny spoke. "I
wouldn't think the Lord blessed me so much," whispered one, "if I had a
man like Old Aaron, though I guess he's good enough to her. And that boy
of theirs never comes home; he must have a funny streak in him too."
"But think of this," one would answer, "how the Lord keeps her cheerful,
kind and faithful through all her troubles."

Granny's was a wonderful garden. She and Old Aaron lived in a little
gray cube of a house that had its front face set straight to the edge of
Charlotte Street. However, the north side of the cube looked into a
great green yard where tall spruce trees, overrun with trumpet vines and
woodbine, shaded long beds of flowers that love semi-shady places. The
rear of the house overlooked an old-fashioned garden enclosed with a
white-washed picket fence. Always were there flowers at Granny's house.
In the cold days of winter blooming masses of geraniums, primroses and
gloxinias crowded against the little square panes of the windows and
looked defiantly out at the snow; while all the old favorites grew in
the garden, from the first March snowdrop to the late November
chrysanthemum. In June, therefore, the garden was a "Lovesome spot"
indeed.

"It vonders me now if Granny's home," thought Phoebe as she opened the
wooden gate and entered the yard.

"Here I am," called Granny. "Back in the garden. I-to-goodness, Phoebe,
did you come once! I just said yesterday to Aaron that I didn't see none
of you folks for long, and here you come! You haven't seen the flowers
for a while."

"Oh!" Phoebe breathed an ecstatic little word of delight. "Oh, your
garden is just vonderful pretty!"

"Ain't," agreed Granny. "Aaron and me's been working pretty hard in it
these weeks. There he is, out in the potato patch; see him?"

Phoebe stood on tiptoe and looked where Granny's finger pointed to the
extreme end of the long vegetable ga