e didn't get after me! He must have put on a lot
of muscle chopping wood and hoeing, for I thought a cyclone had struck
me. I'm resting up now, but I feel pretty sore yet--in spots. That's why
I'm writing to you. I think you'd better write him once in a while, so
that getting what he thinks is a letter won't go to his head like that.

"It'll be the first of May in one month more, and you'll be home!
Jolly!--that seems good to think of.

"Heaps of love from BOB."

On the following day came a letter from Janet Ferry. It was a letter of
several sheets, and the last two pages ran thus:

"The boys think you ought not to know about it, and intend it for a
surprise, but I am so sure that it will do you even more good to hear
while you are waiting to come home, I'm going to tell you. Alec and Bob
have been rolling the lawn with a roller they were at great pains to get
from the Burnside place in the city! You should have seen them at it,
encouraging each other to do the thing thoroughly. Afterward they
scattered wood ashes in all the thin places; Bob said they had been
saving them all winter from the fireplace. I didn't know Alec could be so
interested in out-door labour, but this winter seems to have given him an
impetus toward following Mr. Burnside's example--and Don's--for I think
Don has had a hand in waking him up.

"Speaking of Don--I found him out in your garden yesterday, pruning your
old rose-bushes--the ones that you inherited with the garden. He says you
are particularly fond of the many-leaved pink ones that smell so much
sweeter than any hot-house rose that ever grew.

"Mr. Burnside has been busy all through March, and already has garden
peas in. It seems absurdly early, but he prophesies that there'll be no
more frosts that they can't stand, and promises us peas on the table
three weeks earlier than our neighbours. He is nothing if not daring. He
reads and reads in those books and magazines and papers of his, and then
starts out, armed for action. He and Jake spend much time arguing over
details, but I believe he usually carries his point.

"Don says that while he was finishing his work in your garden your
brother Max came home and strolled out to see what he was doing. Don
mentioned the fact that it would soon be time for the whole garden to be
dug and raked and put in spring order, and Mr. Lane answered that he
would see that it was done--in fact he thought he should do it himself. I
don't exactly underst