cy,' he replied with emphasis.

"So you see this _Man_ is not only somewhat difficult, but he has
observed!

"Last night after dinner, when the men drew their chairs toward the
fire,--for we still have one, though the windows are open,--and the
fragrance from the bed of double English violets, that you sent me,
mingled with the wood smoke, we all began to croon comfortably. As soon
as _he_ had settled back in the big chair, with closed eyes and finger
tips nicely matched, we propounded our conundrum of taking three from
two and having four remain.

"A brief summary of the five years we have lived here will make the
needs of the place more clear.

"The first year, settling ourselves in the house and the arrival of the
Infant completely absorbed ourselves, income, and a good bit of savings.
Repairing the home filled the second year. The outdoor time and money of
the third year was eaten up by an expensive and obliterative process
called 'grading,' a trap for newly fledged landowners. This meant taking
all the kinks and little original attitudes out of the soil and
reproving its occasional shoulder shrugs, so to speak,--Delsarte methods
applied to the earth,--and you know that Evan actually laughed at us for
doing it.

"Even in the beginning we didn't care much for this grading, but it was
in the plan that father Penrose had made for us by a landscape gardener,
renowned about Philadelphia at the time he gave us the place as a 'start
in life,' so we felt in some way mysteriously bound by it. And I may as
well assert right here that, though it is well to have a clear idea of
what you mean to do in making a garden, or ever so small pleasure
grounds, that every bit of labour, however trivial, may go toward one
end and not have to be undone, a conventional plan unsympathetically
made and blindly followed often becomes a cross between Fetish and
Juggernaut. It has taken me exactly four years of blundering to find
that you must live your garden life, find out and study its
peculiarities and necessities yourself, just as you do that of your
indoor home, if success is to be the result!

"As it was, the grading began behind the lilac bushes inside the front
fence and proceeded in fairly graceful sweeps, dividing each side of the
level bit where the old garden had been, the still remaining boxwood
bushes and outlines of walks and beds, saving this from obliteration,
and meeting again at the drying yard.

"Here the proceeding