It looked a desolate place to Mrs. Barclay.

In the midst of it, the one point of life and movement was Lois. She
was in a coarse, stout stuff dress, short, and tucked up besides, to
keep it out of the dirt. Her hands were covered with coarse, thick
gloves, her head with a little old straw hat. At the moment Mrs.
Barclay came up, she was raking a patch of ground which she had
carefully marked out, and bounded with a trampled footway; she was
bringing it with her rake into a condition of beautiful level
smoothness, handling her tool with light dexterity. As Mrs. Barclay
came near, she looked up with a flash of surprise and a smile.

"I have found you," said the lady. "So this is what you are about!"

"It is what I am always about at this time of year."

"What are you doing?"

"Just here I am going to put in radishes and lettuce."

"Radishes and lettuce! And that is instead of French and philosophy!"

"This is philosophy," said Lois, while with a neat movement of her rake
she threw off some stones which she had collected from the surface of
the bed. "Very good philosophy. Surely the philosophy of life is
first--to live."

Mrs. Barclay was silent a moment upon this.

"Are radishes and lettuce the first thing you plant in the spring,
then?"

"O dear, no!" said Lois. "Do you see all that corner? that's in
potatoes. Do you see those slightly marked lines--here, running across
from the walk to the wall?--peas are there. They'll be up soon. I think
I shall put in some corn to-morrow. Yonder is a bed of radishes and
lettuce just out of the ground. We'll have some radishes for tea,
before you know it."

"And do you mean to say that _you_ have been planting potatoes? _you?_"

"Yes," said Lois, looking at her and laughing. "I like to plant
potatoes. In fact, I like to plant anything. What I do not always like
so well, is the taking care of them after they are up and growing."

Mrs. Barclay sat down and watched her. Lois was now tracing delicate
little drills across the breadth of her nicely-prepared bed; little
drills all alike, just so deep and just so far apart. Then she went to
a basket hard by for a little paper of seeds; two papers; and began
deftly to scatter the seed along the drills, with delicate and careful
but quick fingers. Mrs. Barclay watched her till she had filled all the
rows, and began to cover the seeds in; that, too, she did quick and
skilfully.

"That is not fit work for you to do, Lois."

"