teps as bloom-bringing in Miss
Lucinda's garden as in mead or forest. Now Monsieur Leclerc came to
her aid again at odd minutes, and set her flower-beds with mignonette
borders, and her vegetable-garden with salad herbs of new and
flourishing kinds. Yet not even the sweet season seemed to hurry the
catastrophe that we hope, dearest reader, thy tender eyes have long seen
impending. No, for this quaint alliance a quainter Cupid waited,--the
chubby little fellow with a big head and a little arrow, who waits on
youth and loveliness, was not wanted here. Lucinda's God of Love wore a
lank, hard-featured, grizzly shape, no less than that of Israel Slater,
who marched into the garden one fine June morning, earlier than
usual, to find Monsieur in his blouse, hard at work weeding the
cauliflower-bed.

"Good mornin', Sir! good mornin'!" said Israel, in answer to the
Frenchman's greeting. "This is a real slick little garden-spot as ever I
see, and a pootty house, and a real clever woman too. I'll be skwitched,
ef it a'n't a fust-rate consarn, the hull on't. Be you ever a-goin' back
to France, Mister?"

"No, my goot friend. I have nobody there. I stay here; I have friend
here: but there,--_oh, non! je ne reviendrai pas! ah, jamais! jamais!_"

"Pa's dead, eh? or shamming? Well, I don't understand your lingo; but ef
you're a-goin' to stay here, I don't see why you don't hitch hosses with
Miss Lucindy."

Monsieur Leclerc looked up astonished.

"Horses, my friend? I have no horse!"

"Thunder 'n' dry trees! I didn't say you hed, did I? But that comes o'
usin' what Parson Hyde calls figgurs, I s'pose. I wish't he'd use one
kind o' figgurin' a leetle more; he'd pay me for that wood-sawin'. I
didn't mean nothin' about hosses. I sot out fur to say, Why don't ye
marry Miss Lucindy?"

"I?" gasped Monsieur,--"I, the foreign, the poor? I could not to presume
so!"

"Well, I don't see 's it's sech drefful presumption. Ef you're poor,
she's a woman, and real lonesome too; she ha'n't got nuther chick nor
child belongin' to her, and you're the only man she ever took any kind
of a notion to. I guess 't would be jest as much for her good as yourn."

"Hush, good Is-ray-el! it is good to stop there. She would not to marry
after such years of goodness: she is a saint of the blessed."

"Well, I guess saints sometimes fellerships with sinners; I've heerd
tell they did; and ef I was you, I'd make trial for 't. Nothin' ventur',
nothin' have."