triking. At last she demanded
the reason.

"O," said Madge, "the cows have come in, and I have a good deal to do
in the dairy now; it takes up all my mornings. I'm so sorry, I don't
know what to do! but the milk must be seen to, and the butter churned,
and then worked over; and it takes time, Mrs. Barclay."

"And Lois?"

"O, Lois is making garden."

"Making garden!"

"Yes; O, she always does it. It's her particular part of the business.
We all do a little of everything; but the garden is Lois's special
province, and the dairy mine, and Charity takes the cooking and the
sewing. O, we all do our own sewing, and we all do grandmother's
sewing; only Charity takes head in that department."

"What does Lois do in the garden?"

"O, everything. We get somebody to plough it up in the fall; and in the
spring we have it dug over; but all the rest she does. We have a good
garden too," said Madge, smiling.

"And these things take your morning and her morning?"

"Yes, indeed; I should think they did. Rather!"

Mrs. Barclay held her peace then, and for some time afterwards. The
spring came on, the days became soft and lovely, after March had blown
itself out; the trees began to put forth leaves, the blue-birds were
darting about, like skyey messengers; robins were whistling, and
daffodils were bursting, and grass was green. One lovely warm morning,
when everything without seemed beckoning to her, Mrs. Barclay threw on
a shawl and hat, and made her way out to the old garden, which up to
this day she had never entered.

She found the great wide enclosure looking empty and bare enough. The
two or three old apple trees hung protectingly over the wooden bench in
the middle, their branches making pretty tracery against the tender,
clear blue of the sky; but no shade was there. The branches only showed
a little token of swelling and bursting buds, which indeed softened in
a lovely manner the lines of their interlacing network, and promised a
plenty of green shadow by and by. No shadow was needed at present, for
the sun was too gentle; its warmth was welcome, and beneficent, and
kindly. The old cherry tree in the corner was beginning to open its
wealth of white blossoms; everywhere else the bareness and brownness of
winter was still reigning, only excepting the patches of green turf
around the boles and under the spreading boughs of the trees here and
there. The garden was no garden, only a spread of soft, up-turned brown
loam.