A mischievous blue-jay was in a large cherry-tree, apparently
domesticated there, and he occupied himself mimicking over the woman's
head the alternate cries of a little bird in terror and a hawk's scream
of victory.

"Shet up, you thief!" spoke the woman, looking up. "Them blue-jays, gal,
the niggers is afeard of, and kills 'em, as Ole Nick's eavesdroppers and
tale-carriers. That's why I keeps 'em round me. They's better than a
watch-dog to bark at strangers, and, caze they steals all their life, I
love' em. Blue-jay, by Ged! is ole Pat Cannon's bird."

"Grandma," Hulda said, "I wish you had a large, elegant garden. You love
flowers."

"Purty things I always _would_ have," exclaimed the bulldog-bodied
woman, with an oath; "bright things I loved when I was a gal, and traded
what I had away fur 'em. Direckly I got big, I traded ugly things fur
'em, like niggers. I'd give a shipload of niggers fur an apern full of
roses."

"Florida, they say, is beautiful, grandma, and flowers are everywhere
there."

"Yes, gal, they says so; but I don't never expect to go thar.
Margaretty, your mommy, likes it thar. Delaware's my home; some of 'em
hates me yer, and the darned lawyers tries to indict me, but I'll live
on the line till they shoves me over it, whar I've been cock of the walk
sence I was a gal."

As Hulda, also barefooted, but moulded like the flowers, so that her
feet seemed natural as the naked roots, carried the boxes around to the
glass beds encircling a chimney--dahlias, autumnal crocuses or saffrons,
tri-colored chrysanthemums or gold-flowers, and the orange-colored
marigolds--the elder woman, resting on her hoe, smelled the turpentine
of a row of tall sunflowers and twisted one off and put it in her
wide-brimmed Leghorn hat.

"When I hornpipe it on the tight rope," Levin heard her chuckle, "one of
these yer big flowers must die with me."

She disappeared into the peach orchard, which tinted the garden with its
pinkish boughs, and Levin improved the chance to look over the cottage
and the landscape.

It was a mere farm, level as a floor, part of a larger clearing in the
primeval woods, where only fire or age had preyed since man was come;
and, although there seemed more land than belonged to this property, no
other house could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold and
tarnished form of Johnson's castle, sliding its long porch forward at
the base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof which seemed