ase of
her sun-dial. We placed it, big end down, in the mathematical centre of
the garden (I insisted on that), and sunk it into the ground to make it
solid; then a stone mason fashioned a flat space on the top to
accommodate an old brass dial that Polly had found in Boston. The dial
is not half bad. From the heavy, octagonal brass base rises a slender
quill to cast its shadow on the figured circle, while around this circle
old English characters ask, "Am I not wise, who note only bright hours?"
A plat of sod surrounds the dial, and Polly goes to it at least once a
day to set her watch by the shadow of the quill, though I have told her
a hundred times that it is seventeen minutes off standard time. I am
convinced that this estimable lady wilfully ignores conventional time
and marks her cycles by such divisions as "catalogue time," "seed-buying
time," "planting time," "sprouting time," "spraying time," "flowering
time," "seed-gathering time," "mulching time," and "dreary time," until
the catalogues come again. I know it seemed no time at all until she had
let me in to the tune of $687 for the pergola, walls, and garden. She
bought the sun-dial with her own money, I am thankful to say, and it
doesn't enter into this account. I think it must have cost a pretty
penny, for she had a hat "made over" that spring.

Polly has planted the lawn with a lot of shade trees and shrubs, and has
added some clumps of fruit trees. Few trees have been planted near the
house; the four fine oaks, from which we take our name, stand without
rivals and give ample shade. The great black oak near the east end of
the porch is a tower of strength and beauty, which is "seen and known of
all men," while the three white oaks farther to the west form a clump
which casts a grateful shade when the sun begins to decline. The seven
acres of forest to the east is left severely alone, save where the
carriage drive winds through it, and Polly watches so closely that the
foot of the Philistine rarely crushes her wild flowers. Its sacredness
recalls the schoolgirl's definition of a virgin forest: "One in which
the hand of man has never dared to put his foot into it." Polly wanders
in this grove for hours; but then she knows where and how things grow,
and her footsteps are followed by flowers. If by chance she brushes one
down, it rises at once, shakes off the dust, and says, "I ought to have
known better than to wander so far from home."

She keeps a wise eye