by just planning where I could put things and what
they'd look like. Liliums, now, I could grow them in masses from June to
October." He was becoming excited, like a war horse scenting battle from
afar, and forgot himself. "The Lilium Giganteum--I don't know whether
you've ever seen one, miss--but if you did, it'd almost take your breath
away. A Lilium that grows twelve feet high and more, and has a flower
like a great snow-white trumpet, and the scent pouring out of it so that
it floats for yards. There's a place where I could grow them so that
you'd come on them sudden, and you'd think they couldn't be true."

"Grow them, Kedgers, begin to grow them," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I have
never seen them--I must see them."

Kedgers' low, deprecatory chuckle made itself heard again,

"Perhaps I'm going too fast," he said. "It would take a good bit of
expense to do it, miss. A good bit."

Then Miss Vanderpoel made--and she made it in the simplest
matter-of-fact manner, too--the startling remark which, three hours
later, all Stornham village had heard of. The most astounding part of
the remark was that it was uttered as if there was nothing in it which
was not the absolutely natural outcome of the circumstances of the case.

"Expense which is proper and necessary need not be considered," she
said. "Regular accounts will be kept and supervised, but you can have
all that is required."

Then it appeared that Kedgers almost became pale. Being a foreigner,
perhaps she did not know how much she was implying when she said such a
thing to a man who had never held a place like Timson's.

"Miss," he hesitated, even shamefacedly, because to suggest to such
a fine-mannered, calm young lady that she might be ignorant, seemed
perilously near impertinence. "Miss, did you mean you wanted only the
Lilium Giganteum, or--or other things, as well."

"I should like to see," she answered him, "all that you see. I should
like to hear more of it all, when we have time to talk it over. I
understand we should need time to discuss plans."

The quiet way she went on! Seeming to believe in him, almost as if he
was Mr. Timson. The old feeling, born and fostered by the great head
gardener's rule, reasserted itself.

"It means more to work--and someone over them, miss," he said. "If--if
you had a man like Mr. Timson----"

"You have not forgotten what you learned. With men enough under you it
can be put into practice."

"You mean you'd trust me,