e looked so bewitching, even with a milky crescent over her red
mouth, that she would have melted the heart of the most predestinate old
misogynist in Christendom.

Timothy was not so entirely at his ease. His eyes had looked into life
only a few more summers, but their "radiant morning visions" had been
dispelled; experience had tempered joy. Gay, however, had not arrived at
an age where people's motives can be suspected for an instant. If there
had been any possible plummet with which to sound the depths of her
unconscious philosophy, she apparently looked upon herself as a guest
out of heaven, flung down upon this hospitable planet with the single
responsibility of enjoying its treasures.

O happy heart of childhood! Your simple creed is rich in faith, and
trust, and hope. You have not learned that the children of a common
Father can do aught but love and help each other.

SCENE VIII.

_The Old Garden._

JABE AND SAMANTHA EXCHANGE HOSTILITIES, AND THE FORMER SAYS A GOOD WORD
FOR THE LITTLE WANDERERS.

"God Almighty first planted a garden, and it is indeed the purest of all
human pleasures," said Lord Bacon, and Miss Vilda would have agreed with
him. Her garden was not simply the purest of all her pleasures, it was
her only one; and the love that other people gave to family, friends, or
kindred she lavished on her posies.

It was a dear, old-fashioned, odorous garden, where Dame Nature had
never been forced but only assisted to do her duty. Miss Vilda sowed her
seeds in the springtime wherever there chanced to be room, and they came
up and flourished and went to seed just as they liked, those being the
only duties required of them. Two splendid groups of fringed "pinies,"
the pride of Miss Avilda's heart, grew just inside the gate, and hard
by the handsomest dahlias in the village, quilled beauties like carved
rosettes of gold and coral and ivory. There was plenty of feathery
"sparrowgrass," so handy to fill the black and yawning chasms of summer
fireplaces and furnish green for "boquets." There was a stray peach or
greengage tree here and there, and if a plain, well-meaning carrot
chanced to lift its leaves among the poppies, why, they were all the
children of the same mother, and Miss Vilda was not the woman to root
out the invader and fling it into the ditch. There was a bed of yellow
tomatoes, where, in the season, a hundred tiny golden balls hung among
the green leaves; and just beside them, in fr