ied, five years ago, I wanted to move to California and marry
Rose. But she wrote that her father was so poorly she couldn't marry
me yet. She has to wait on him every minute, and he's restless, and
they move here and there--a hard life for my poor girl. So I had to
take a new lease of patience, Master. One learns how to wait in twenty
years. But I shall have her some day, God willing. Our love will be
crowned yet. So I wait, Master, and try to keep my life and soul clean
and wholesome and young for her.

"That's my story, Master, and we'll not say anything more about it
just now, for I dare say you don't exactly know what to say. But at
times I'll talk of her to you and that will be a rare pleasure to me;
I think that was why I wanted you to know about her."

He did talk often to me of her, and I soon came to realize what this
far-away woman meant in his life. She was for him the centre of
everything. His love was strong, pure, and idyllic--the ideal love of
which the loftiest poets sing. It glorified his whole inner life with
a strange, unfailing radiance. I found that everything he did was done
with an eye single to what she would think of it when she came.
Especially did he put his love into his garden.

"Every flower in it stands for a thought of her, Master," he said. "It
is a great joy to think that she will walk in this garden with me some
day. It will be complete then--my Rose of joy will be here to crown
it."

That summer and winter passed away, and when spring came again,
lettering her footsteps with violets in the meadows and waking all the
sleeping loveliness of old homestead gardens, Uncle Dick's long
deferred happiness came with her. One evening when I was in our "den,"
mid-deep in study of old things that seemed musty and unattractive
enough in contrast with the vivid, newborn, out-of-doors, Uncle Dick
came home from the post office with an open letter in his hand. His
big voice trembled as he said,

"Master, she's coming home. Her father is dead and she has nobody in
the world now but me. In a month she will be here. Don't talk to me of
it yet--I want to taste the joy of it in silence for a while."

He hastened away to his garden and walked there until darkness fell,
with his face uplifted to the sky, and the love rapture of countless
generations shining in his eyes. Later on, we sat on one of the old
stone benches and Uncle Dick tried to talk practically.

Bayside people soon found out that Ros