eadful
ceilings seem higher.' How nice you are to understand like that!"

My hand crept over to cover her own that lay on my arm. "Indeed, indeed
I do understand," I whispered. Which, as the veriest cub reporter can
testify, is no way to begin an interview.

A hundred happy memories filled the little low room as Alma Pflugel
showed me her treasures. The cat purred in great content, and the stove
cast a rosy glow over the scene as the simple woman told the story of
each precious relic, from the battered candle-dipper on the shelf, to
the great mahogany folding table, and sewing stand, and carved bed. Then
there was the old horn lantern that Jacob Pflugel had used a century
before, and in one corner of the sitting-room stood Grossmutter
Pflugel's spinning-wheel. Behind cupboard doors were ranged the
carefully preserved blue-and-white china dishes, and on the shelf below
stood the clumsy earthen set that Grosspapa Pflugel himself had modeled
for his young bride in those days of long ago. In the linen chest there
still lay, in neat, fragrant folds, piles of the linen that had been
spun on that time-yellowed spinning-wheel. And because of the tragedy in
the honest face bent over these dear treasures, and because she tried so
bravely to hide her tears, I knew in my heart that this could never be a
newspaper story.

"So," said Alma Pflugel at last, and rose and walked slowly to the
window and stood looking out at the wind-swept garden. That window, with
its many tiny panes, once had looked out across a wilderness, with an
Indian camp not far away. Grossmutter Pflugel had sat at that window
many a bitter winter night, with her baby in her arms, watching and
waiting for the young husband who was urging his ox-team across the ice
of Lake Michigan in the teeth of a raging blizzard.

The little, low-ceilinged room was very still. I looked at Alma Pflugel
standing there at the window in her neat blue gown, and something about
the face and figure--or was it the pose of the sorrowful head?--seemed
strangely familiar. Somewhere in my mind the resemblance haunted me.
Resemblance to--what? Whom?

"Would you like to see my garden?" asked Alma Pflugel, turning from the
window. For a moment I stared in wonderment. But the honest, kindly face
was unsmiling. "These things that I have shown you, I can take with me
when I--go. But there," and she pointed out over the bare, wind-swept
lot, "there is something that I cannot take. My flowers!