work.
SAM.

_P.S._--Something is sprouting in your garden that I don't
understand.

I knew those hollyhocks would rise up some day and bear witness against
me. For the life of me I couldn't make up my mind what to say about
them, so I sent the Byrd home by Tolly, who was going to take Edith out
to see how her okra was progressing, and stayed in the safe shelter of
my home. On the Byrd's rompers I pinned this note:

Strike, if you will, my young back,
But spare, oh spare, this little brat!

BETTY.

There are all kinds of poetry in the world.

That night when I was beginning to get restless and wish I had gone out
to my fate, even if it included being throttled with a pea-vine, Tolly
and Edith came into town and stopped at my gate in such a condition that
I was positively alarmed about them.

"Five baskets of peas!" gasped Tolly, as he fell forward limp over his
wheel.

"My thumb! my thumb!" moaned Edith, with the afflicted member in her
mouth.

"But, say, Betty," Tolly revived enough to say, "we are not going to
tell Sue and Billy and Julia and Pink. They are going out to-morrow to
call. Let 'em go--it's coming to 'em."

"Oh no, I won't say a word," I agreed, with the intensest joy. "Come
over to-morrow, Edith, and let's finish _My Lady's Fan_. I'm dying to
know what happened to her at the court ball. Good night!"

"No, you come over to my house; I'll be in bed," Edith wailed from the
middle of the road as Tolly turned and made his machine buzz for home.

Then for five days--glorious, warm, growing, blooming days--I stayed in
town in a state of relapse from gardening of which the sorenesses in the
calves of my legs and my thumbs were the strongest symptoms, and
listened to my martyred friends' accounts of what Sam was doing to
Peter. I also had a bulletin from Peter every day by the rural-delivery
route. That is, they were in Peter's handwriting, but they read more
like government crop reports than a poet's letters to the girl to whom
he considered himself engaged. I sent them on to Judge Vandyne, and I
got a glorious written chuckle in return for them.

Then, one morning when I had about got over the bashfulness about the
hollyhocks, and had decided to deny them absolutely and stick to it, for
a time at least, I happened to pick up Grandmother Nelson's book. It was
full time--may