the hollyhock seeds he had stolen for
me.

"Say where and I'll dig for you," he said; but I saw a glint of
something fairly shoot from his eyes.

"Here," I said, and stood at a nice right angle from the corner of the
house and the old cedar-tree he had said he could nail the wires to to
save a post, when he had to put up a fence.

He came over promptly with the spade and poised it to dig into the
ground--and my heart.

Then he hesitated, and looked at me quickly for a second. Then he threw
down the spade and said, quietly:

"I'll go get that rotted stump dirt before I break ground for the
lilacs, and you can think about things while you wait." With that he
lifted the wheelbarrow and trundled out of the situation, leaving me in
the depths of a hurt uncertainty.

But if Samuel Foster Crittenden thought I was as stupid as that, he had
a chance to learn better--at least I thought I would give him one. I'm
not sure yet that I did.

As soon as he was out of sight I flew to the end of the garden, where I
thought the row of hollyhocks would make a lovely background for all the
long lines of vegetables and flowers running into it, sighted with my
eye, ran a trench with the rusty old hoe, flung in my seeds, and covered
it up in less time than it takes to tell it. When Sam came back I had
spaded out at least two and a half shovelfuls of dirt, that I found
surprisingly heavy, from the hole for the first lilac. I saw him start
and hesitate as if about to say something, and then I think--I think,
but I can't be sure--his eyes rested on my hasty and surreptitious
gardening.

"You are the real thing, Betty," was all he said as he roughed my hair,
first back and then down over my eyes, and took Grandmother Nelson's
spade from my hand and began to make the dirt fly out of the hole. I
wonder what I'll say when those hollyhocks come up.

And then we all worked. It astonished me to find what one man, one
woman, and one small boy can do to a plot of earth in three hours, with
a string, sharpened sticks, seed, hoes, spades, rakes, and radiant
happiness. At four o'clock we all three sank down in a heap at the end
of the last row of green peas in delicious exhaustion.

"Nice little seed, I'll dig you up to-morrow to see how you feel," said
the Byrd as he patted in a stray pea he had found with the beets. "I
can't dig you all up, but I will as many as I can."

"Yes, you will--not," said Sam, reaching for him as he skimmed and
dipp