the cross-road leading to his little black
house, he paused a moment, as if he were working out something and must
wait for the answer. Then he continued on the way he had been going, and
a quarter of a mile farther on stopped before a great house of a dull
and time-worn yellow, where, in the corresponding front window of the
upper chambers, two women sat, each in her own solitary state, binding
shoes. These were the Miller twins. Sophy saw him as he opened the side
gate and went along her path to the back of the house. She rose, tossed
her work on the table, and ran into an overlooking chamber to watch
him. Sophy had been the pretty one of the family. Now her fair face had
broadened, her blond hair showed a wide track at the parting, and her
mouth dropped at the corners; but her faded blue eyes still looked
wistfully through their glasses. They had a grave simplicity, like that
of a child.

As she watched Gardener Jim, a frown came upon her forehead. "What under
heavens?" she muttered; and then she saw. Jim was examining her
neglected garden, and the wonder was not in that. It was that after all
these years, when he had worked for other people, suddenly he had come
to her. A moment after, he looked up, to find her at his elbow.

"I should think anybody'd be ashamed," said he, "to let things go to
wrack an' ruin this way." The paths were thick with weeds. Faithful
sweet-william and phlox had evidently struggled for years and barely
held their own against misfortune, and bouncing-bet was thrifty. But
others of the loved in old-time gardens had starved and died. "You used
to have the handsomest canterbury-bells anywhere round," said Jim. He
spoke seriously, as if it pained him to find things at such a pass.
"Don't look as if you'd sowed a seed sence nobody knows when. Where's
your pinies?"

Sophy turned toward the high board-fence that ran from the exact middle
of the house down through the garden.

"Over there," she said.

"Over where?"

"In her part."

"Her part o' the place? What you been an' cut it up this way for?"

If Gardener Jim had ever heard of the feud that separated the two
sisters he had apparently forgotten it, and Sophy, knowing his reputed
state, felt no surprise.

"She lives in t'other part o' the house," she vouchsafed cautiously.

"Well," he grumbled, "that's no reason, as I see, why you should ha'
gone an' sliced up the gardin." He gave one more estimating look at the
forlorn waste. "Well