s, over to the Corners! Now I want
to know! have you grown so 't I didn't know you? and how's your
mother? Jest wait half a minute, and I'll send her a little posy.
There's some other things besides roses, perhaps she'd like to have a
few of."

She darted out, and filled the boys' hands with pinks and mignonette,
pansies and geraniums.

It was not a large garden, this of Anne Peace's, but every inch of
space was made the most of. The little square and oblong beds lay
close to the fence, and from tulip-time to the coming of frost they
were ablaze with flowers. Nothing was allowed to straggle, or to take
up more than its share of room. The roses were tied firmly to their
neat green stakes; the crown-imperials nodded over a spot of ground
barely large enough to hold their magnificence; while the phlox and
sweet-william actually had to fight for their standing-room.

It was a pleasant sight, at all odd times of the day, to see Miss
Peace bending over her flowers, snipping off dead leaves, pruning, and
tending, all with loving care.

Many flower-lovers are shy of plucking their favourites, and I recall
one rose-fancier, whose gifts, like those of the Greeks, were dreaded
by his neighbours, as the petals were always ready to drop before he
could make up his mind to cut one of the precious blossoms; but this
was not the case with Anne Peace. Dozens of shallow baskets hung in
her neat back entry, and they were filled and sent, filled and sent,
all summer long, till one would have thought they might almost find
their way about alone. It is a positive fact that her baskets were
always brought back, "a thing imagination boggles at;" but perhaps
this was because the neighbours liked them better full than empty.

"Makin' flowers so cheap," Mrs. Means would say, "seems to take the
wuth of 'em away, to my mind; but I'm too feelin', I know that well
enough. Anne, she's kind o' callous, and she don't think of things
that make me squinch, seem's though."

Weeks passed on, the broken leg was healed, and Mrs. Means departed to
her own house. "I s'pose you'll miss me, Anne," she said, at parting,
"I shall you; and you have ben good to me, if 't _has_ ben kind o'
dull here, so few comin' and goin'." (Miss Peace's was generally the
favourite resort of all the young people of the village, and half the
old ones, but the "neighbouring" had dropped off, since Mrs. Means
had been there.) "Good-by, Anne, and thank you for all you've done. I