Louisa
would have said. It was in May that Susanna had gone, and the first line
of verse held his attention.

May comes, day comes,
One who was away comes;
All the earth is glad again,
Kind and fair to me.

May comes, day comes,
One who was away comes;
Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be.

May comes, day comes,
One who was away comes;
Higher are the hills of home,
Bluer is the sea.

The Hathaway house was in the suburbs, on a rise of ground, and as John
turned to the window he saw the full moon hanging yellow in the sky.
It shone on the verdant slopes and low wooded hills that surrounded the
town, and cast a glittering pathway on the ocean that bathed the beaches
of the nearby shore.

"How long shall I have to wait," he wondered, "before my hills of home
look higher, and my sea bluer, because Susanna has come back to 'hearth
and board'!"

V. The Little Quail Bird

Susanna had helped at various household tasks ever since her arrival at
the Settlement, for there was no room for drones in the Shaker hive; but
after a few weeks in the kitchen with Martha, the herb-garden had been
assigned to her as her particular province, the Sisters thinking her
better fitted for it than for the preserving and pickling of fruit, or
the basket-weaving that needed special apprenticeship.

The Shakers were the first people to raise, put up, and sell garden
seeds in our present-day fashion, and it was they, too, who began the
preparation of botanical medicines, raising, gathering, drying, and
preparing herbs and roots for market; and this industry, driven from
the field by modern machinery, was still a valuable source of income in
Susanna's day. Plants had always grown for Susanna, and she loved
them like friends, humoring their weakness, nourishing their strength,
stimulating, coaxing, disciplining them, until they could do no less
than flourish under her kind and hopeful hand.

Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little garden of herbs, with its
wholesome fragrances! Healing lay in every root and stem, in every leaf
and bud, and the strong aromatic odors stimulated her flagging spirit or
her aching head, after the sleepless nights in which she tried to decide
her future life and Sue's.

The plants were set out in neat rows and clumps, and she soon learned to
know the strange ones--chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot, wormwood, lovage,
boneset, lemon and sweet balm, lavender and rue,