y demonstrations of interest. The
smallness of her feet had also been registered, and the thickness and
growth of her curling hair ranked as a subject of discussion only second
in interest to the development of crops.

But this affection notwithstanding, a curious respect for her existed.
She had played among them in the store in her little dusty pinafore; one
and all of them had given her rustic offerings, bringing her special
gifts of yellow popcorn ears, or abnormal yams unexpectedly developed in
their own gardens, or bags of hickory nuts; but somehow they did not
think or speak of her as they did of each other's children.

Tom had built a comfortable white house, over whose verandah honeysuckles
and roses soon clambered and hung. In time the ground enclosed about it
had a curious likeness to the bowery unrestraint of the garden he had
played in during his childhood. It was a pleasure to him to lay it out on
the old plan and to plant japonicas, flowering almonds, and syringa
bushes, as they had grown in the days when he had played under them as a
child, or lounged on the grass near them as a boy. He and Sheba planted
everything themselves--or, rather, Sheba walked about with him or stood
by his side and talked while he worked. In time she knew almost as well
as he did the far-away garden he took as his model. She learned to know
the place by heart.

"Were you a little boy then, Uncle Tom?" she would say, "when there was a
mock-orange and a crape myrtle next to the big yellow rose-bush?"

There were even times when he found her memory was better than his own,
and she could correct him.

"Ah! no, Uncle Tom," she would say; "the pansies were not in the little
heart-shaped bed; they were all round the one with the pink harp-flower
in the middle."

When she was six years old he sent for some books and began seriously to
work with a view to refreshing his memory on subjects almost forgotten.

"I'm preparing myself for a nursery governess, Sheba," he said. "What we
want is a nursery governess, and I don't know where to find one. I
shouldn't know how to manage her if I did find her, so I've got to post
up for the position myself."

The child was so happy with him in all circumstances, that it was easy to
teach her anything. She had learned to read and write before she
discovered that the process she went through to acquire these
accomplishments was not an agreeable pastime specially invented by Tom
for her amusement