ed power of the man or at the
wonder of life, no one could have told.

Wilfred sauntered away to the old apple-tree, and began picking off
twigs here and there, to drop them on the grass.

Gardener Jim threw down the axe at last and wiped his forehead.

"Where you want them boards piled?" he asked Eliza briefly.

"Down there by the wood-shed." Her voice trembled. "They'll make good
kindlin'."

Over the space where two or three sound posts were standing, she spoke
to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she
pleaded for strength to break the web of years.

"You better have some o' them boards."

"Mebbe I had," said Sophy.

"Here, Wilfred," called Gardener Jim. "You pile them boards an' I'll see
if I can't loosen up the dirt a mite round this old phlox. Anybody must
be a 'tarnal fool to build up a high board-fence an' cut off the sun
from things when they're tryin' to grow."

Sophy looked timidly at her sister.

"I s'pose 'tis foolish to try to have anything if you don't take care on
't," she said.

Eliza cleared her throat and answered with the same irrelevance:--

"He's fixed up the pinies real nice. See 'f you remember which the white
one was."

Sophy stepped over the dividing line, and the two sisters walked away
to the peony settlement. Gardener Jim touched Wilfred on the arm.

"You go along," said he. "I'll finish here. You 'tend to Annie's gardin.
I hove a trowel over the fence there this mornin'. You go an' git up
some o' them weeds."

Wilfred nodded in unquestioning compliance. As he hesitated then for a
moment, watching the sisters, and wondering what they were talking
about, Eliza raised her hand and brushed a leaf from Sophy's shoulder.
Then they went on talking, but apparently of the garden, for they
pointed here and there in a fervor of discovery. Wilfred turned with a
rush and went off to Annie Darling's.

He found the trowel under the fence, as Gardener Jim had prophesied,
and he worked all day, with a brief nooning at home. The garden was
full of voices. Here was a plant he had driven ten miles to get for
her; here were the mint and balm she loved. It seemed to him, as the
hours went by, that he was talking with her and telling her many
things--confessions, some of them, and pleas for her continued
kindliness. When he had finished, all but carrying away his pile of
weeds, he heard a voice at the gate. It was Lily, under a bright
parasol, her face repeating its b