ly did not hear. He went on freeing the peonies.

"No wonder things git pindlin' under this old locust-tree," Sophy heard
him grumble. "Throwin' down leaves an' branches every day in the year.
Half on 't's rotten. It ought to come down."

"Well," said Eliza, "if it ought to come down, let it come. You know
where to find the axe."

Sophy, on the other side of the fence, could hardly bear the horror and
surprise of it. She forgot she was "not speaking" to her sister.

"O 'Liza!" she cried piercingly. "That was mother's tree. She set it out
with her own hands. I dunno what she'd say."

There was a moment's quiet, and then Eliza's voice came gruffly:--

"You let the tree alone."

But Jim had no thought of touching it. He was working silently at his
task. Sophy went into the house, trembling. She had spoken first. But it
was to save the tree.

The warm spring days went on, and Annie Darling had not come. Weeds
began to devastate her garden, and Wilfred used to look over the fence
and wish uncle Jim would do something. Once he spoke to uncle Jim about
it, in the way everybody had of making him responsible for the floral
well-being of the neighborhood; but Gardener Jim would hardly listen.

"You 'tend to it! you 'tend to it!" he cried testily. "I've got all I
can do to git them Miller gals' pieces into shape so 't they can sow a
few seeds."

But one morning he sought out Wilfred, mending a gap in his own orchard
wall by the road.

"Wilfred," said Gardener Jim, "have you 'tended to Annie's gardin?"

He had laid down his hoe and put up a foot on a stone in good position
for talk.

Wilfred dropped his crowbar and came forward.

"Why, no," said he, irritated, he hardly knew why, as if by a call to a
forgotten task. "Nobody's asked me to 'tend to it."

Jim stood for a moment looking through the tree-spaces, and then his
gaze came back to his nephew, and Wilfred, with a start, realized that
he had never before had the chance to look into uncle Jim's eyes. Now he
found them direct and rather stern.

"Wilfred," said Gardener Jim, "don't you be a 'tarnal fool."

Wilfred said nothing, but immediately, he could not tell why, he seemed
to be looking upon a picture of Annie standing among the flowers in her
little plain dress. His heart was beating faster, and he said to himself
that, after all, it would be sort of nice if Annie would come home.
Gardener Jim was speaking laboriously, as if he dragged out conclusions
he