ats to me.
I dream about him at night. I adored him when I was at The Manor, and so
did Mabel," and my lips quivered so I had to turn against the harness
hanging on the wall against which I drooped.

"Keats or Peter?" asked Sam as he pressed his whip across my shoulders
in comforting little licks because his hand was too muddy to pat me.

"Both," I sniffed.

"Don't," said Sam, with cheering command in his voice. "We are too late
to help Keats, and plenty early to pull Pete out of his divine fire.
Let's go get some good grub from Mammy so we can plant the garden before
sundown, and stake out the poet's corner, too. I didn't have the money
to hire the plowing done, but I am almost through for the present; and I
can whirl in now and get in shape for Petie's rescue in no time."

"It's popped its skin with stuffing, and Mammy says come on while the
'taters stands up stiff," announced the Byrd, half-way up the path from
the house to the barn.

"He's talking about a duckling, but let's hope Peter can be mentioned in
the same terms in the near future," said Sam, as he drove the fleet Byrd
and me before him with the switch, in a scamper to Mammy and food.

"Yes," said Sam, as he stood an hour later in the middle of the plot
under the south window, which spread out in the sun like a great black
lake, smooth from his repeated plowing and harrowing, "that is the
richest bit of land at The Briers or in Benton County. It will bring
some posies for you, Bettykin."

"I'm not going to plant just flowers in it, Sam," I answered in a tone
that admitted of no discussion, "Do you remember the part of
grandmother's book that told what she made off of the southern half-acre
of hers the year everything failed? I've got it right here, and I'm
going to follow it," and as I spoke I hugged the ancestral garden to my
breast with one arm, while I held the old grass basket I had made for
Sam in my infancy in the other hand, with all my town seeds in it.

"Oh, there's plenty of garden-land all over the place, Betty. Come on
and sow the posies."

"There's not plenty of onion and beet and lettuce and okra and tomato
and celery land right at the well, Sam, that Byrd and I can carry water
from," I answered, positively. "Is this land mine or yours?"

"Yours."

"Wait. I forgot!" I exclaimed in sudden, embarrassed consternation. "Are
you renting this land to me, Sam?"

"Renting it to you, Betty?" For a second Sam's eyes blazed in a way I
hadn'