n for
hollyhocks. A ragged row of them borders the dilapidated picket fence
behind which, crowding up to the sociable road, stands the house. As I
drive that way it always seems to look out at me like some half-earnest
worker, inviting a chat about the weather or the county fair; hence,
probably, its good-natured dilapidation. At the gate I heard a voice,
and a boy about three years old, in a soiled gingham apron, a sturdy,
blue-eyed little chap, whose face was still eloquent of his recent
breakfast, came running to meet me. I stopped the mare. A moment later a
woman was at the gate between the rows of hollyhocks; when she saw me
she began hastily to roll down her sleeves.

"Why, Mr. Grayson!"

"How's the boy, Anna?"

And it was the cheerful talk we had there by the roadside, and the sight
of the sturdy boy playing in the sunshine--and the hollyhocks, and the
dilapidated house--that brought to memory the old story of Anna which I
here set down, not because it carries any moral, but because it is a
common little piece out of real life in which Harriet and I have been
interested.

VI

THE DRUNKARD

It is a strange thing: Adventure. I looked for her high and I looked for
her low, and she passed my door in a tattered garment--unheeded. For I
had neither the eye of simplicity nor the heart of humility. One day I
looked for her anew and I saw her beckoning from the Open Road; and
underneath the tags and tatters I caught the gleam of her celestial
garment; and I went with her into a new world.

I have had a singular adventure, in which I have made a friend. And I
have seen new things which are also true.

My friend is a drunkard--at least so I call him, following the custom of
the country. On his way from town he used often to come by my farm. I
could hear him singing afar off. Beginning at the bridge, where on still
days one can hear the rattle of a wagon on the loose boards, he sang in
a peculiar clear high voice. I make no further comment upon the singing,
nor the cause of it; but in the cool of the evening when the air was
still--and he usually came in the evening--I often heard the cadences of
his song with a thrill of pleasure. Then I saw him come driving by my
farm, sitting on the spring seat of his one-horse wagon, and if he
chanced to see me in my field, he would take off his hat and make me a
grandiloquent bow, but never for a moment stop his singing. And so he
passed by the house and I, with a smile