in seed. Through July, Antonia said, the house was buried in
them; the Bohemians, I remembered, always planted hollyhocks. The front
yard was enclosed by a thorny locust hedge, and at the gate grew two
silvery, moth-like trees of the mimosa family. From here one looked down
over the cattle yards, with their two long ponds, and over a wide stretch
of stubble which they told me was a rye-field in summer.

At some distance behind the house were an ash grove and two orchards; a
cherry orchard, with gooseberry and currant bushes between the rows, and
an apple orchard, sheltered by a high hedge from the hot winds. The older
children turned back when we reached the hedge, but Jan and Nina and Lucie
crept through it by a hole known only to themselves and hid under the
low-branching mulberry bushes.

As we walked through the apple orchard, grown up in tall bluegrass,
Antonia kept stopping to tell me about one tree and another. "I love them
as if they were people," she said, rubbing her hand over the bark. "There
was n't a tree here when we first came. We planted every one, and used to
carry water for them, too--after we'd been working in the fields all day.
Anton, he was a city man, and he used to get discouraged. But I could n't
feel so tired that I would n't fret about these trees when there was a dry
time. They were on my mind like children. Many a night after he was asleep
I've got up and come out and carried water to the poor things. And now,
you see, we have the good of them. My man worked in the orange groves in
Florida, and he knows all about grafting. There ain't one of our neighbors
has an orchard that bears like ours."

In the middle of the orchard we came upon a grape-arbor, with seats built
along the sides and a warped plank table. The three children were waiting
for us there. They looked up at me bashfully and made some request of
their mother.

"They want me to tell you how the teacher has the school picnic here every
year. These don't go to school yet, so they think it's all like the
picnic."

After I had admired the arbor sufficiently, the youngsters ran away to an
open place where there was a rough jungle of French pinks, and squatted
down among them, crawling about and measuring with a string. "Jan wants to
bury his dog there," Antonia explained. "I had to tell him he could. He's
kind of like Nina Harling; you remember how hard she used to take little
things? He has funny notions, like her."

We sat dow