e town, Gabriella
long knew this approach only by her drives with her grandmother. At the
rear of the house was enough for her: a large yard, green grazing lots
for the stable of horses, and best of all a high-fenced garden
containing everything the heart could desire: vegetables, and flowers;
summer-houses, and arbors with seats; pumps of cold water, and
hot-houses of plants and grapes, and fruit trees, and a swing, and
gooseberry bushes--everything.

In one corner, the ground was too shaded by an old apple tree to be of
use: they gave this to Gabriella for her garden. She had attached
particularly to her person a little negress of about the same age--her
Milly, the color of a ripe gourd. So when in spring the gardener began
to make his garden, with her grandmother sometimes standing over him,
directing, Gabriella, taking her little chair to the apple tree,--with
some pretended needle-work and a real switch,--would set Milly to work
making hers. Nothing that they put into the earth ever was heard of
again, though they would sometimes make the same garden over every day
for a week. So that more than once, forsaking seed, they pulled off the
tops of green things near by, planted these, and so had a perfect
garden in an hour.

Then Gabriella, seated under the apple tree, would order Milly to water
the flowers from the pump; and taking her switch and calling Milly
close, she would give her a sharp rap or two around the bare legs (for
that was expected), and tell her that if she didn't stop being so
trifling, she would sell her South to the plantations. Whereupon Milly,
injured more in heart than legs, and dropping the watering-pot, would
begin to bore her dirty fists into her eyes. Then Gabriella would say
repentantly:--

"No, I won't, Milly! And you needn't work any more to-day. And you can
have part of my garden if you want it."

Milly, smiling across the mud on her cheeks, would murmur:--

"You ain' goin' sell yo' Milly down South, is you, Miss Gabriella?"

"_I_ won't. But I'm not so sure about grandmother, Milly. You know she
WILL do it sometimes. Our cotton's got to be picked by SOMEBODY, and
who's to do it but you lazy negroes?"

In those days the apple tree would be blooming, and the petals would
sift down on Gabriella. Looking up at the marriage bell of blossoms,
and speaking in the language of her grandmother, she would say:--

"Milly, when I grow up and get married, I am going to be married out of
doors