e at the place, too?" queried the young lady
sharply.

"Babe's going to capture a corporation or trust or something, and
have oceans of money and build on a wing and a conservatory and make
Italian gardens, I believe," he answered, pleasantly enough.

"But I'd just as soon she left the gardens alone," he went on, "the
rest of us like 'em the way they are. There was one separate one on
the west side, just for Uncle Robert's chrysanthemums. He used to
work all the morning there and then read in the afternoon. He'd sit
on the side porch with his pipe and Bismarck--he was an old
collie--and he did tell the bulliest yarns. He helped us with
lessons, too. I don't know what we'd have done without Uncle Rob.
Father was so busy--he had a big country practice and he used to get
terribly tired--and we went to Uncle Rob for everything. He got us
out of more scrapes, Ridge and me--

"There were tiger lillies in the south garden and lots of clumps of
peonies. Grandmother put those there. And fennel and mint. Mother
used to like dahlias--it seems as if she must have had a quarter of
a mile of dahlias, but of course she didn't--all colors. That garden
ran right up against the house, and directly next to the bricks was
a row of white geraniums. They looked awfully well against the red.
It's a brick house and the date is in bricks over the door--1840. Of
course it's been rented for ten years now, but we have our things
stored in the attic and the people are careful and--well they love
the old place, you know, and they keep up the gardens. They wanted
to buy when father died and again after mother--

"But Ridge and I just hung on and leased it from year to year. We
always hoped to get it back. And now to think that I should be the
one to do it!"

"How are you the one?" Brother inquired practically.

"Why Uncle Wesley that ran away to sea--I used to have his room,
just over the kitchen, and many a time I've climbed down the side
porch just as he did, and run away fishing--Uncle Wesley died in
England, last year, and left me considerably more than he'd ever
have made if he'd minded grandmother and studied to be a parson. It
seems Uncle Rob knew where he was all the time, and wrote him,
before he was sick himself, to leave the money to the family, and by
George, he did.

"Lots of the old stuff is there--the sideboard and the library table
and grandfather's old desk mother kept the preserves in.

"I used to lie on an old sofa in th