Slowly he drank the whiskey, every
drop of which seemed to go to my heart like cold lead.

"But, father!" I exclaimed, determined to win him back. Dabney was
putting the silver stopper in the decanter over by the sideboard, and I
thought I saw a sob shake his bent old shoulders as his black hands
trembled. "I'd like to know if I'm not as purely American as you are,
and have I not the same right to want, demand and work for an American
nationalism, even in a garden, as you have? I'll have you know, sir,
that the future of the nation is in the hands of the women. We can
produce pure Americans or let the whole country go hybrid." And as I
spoke I let my temper rise to a point which I hoped would shock father
and take his mind from the decanter and the ice. "I demand that you
allow me to carry out your plans for my garden, and that you help me do
it to the limit of the hinges in your back and Dabney's. And, Dabney,
don't let me hear another word about that hinge until those dahlias are
in bloom. Also get me a half dozen bottles of dynamite to blow out that
Italian garden. I never did like it."

"Yes'm," answered Dabney, meekly but comprehendingly, for he hastily
flung a napkin over the ice and gently set the decanter back in its
rack. "But dynamite, it comes in sticks and not in bottles. And it
would shake the roots of them old poplars clean most down to hell."

"How'll we get that sunken garden out, then, father?" I asked, and I saw
the life and color come back to his face in a flood of humor.

"We might try filling it in," he answered, and then we both laughed at
ourselves, with Dabney joining in.

CHAPTER VII

THE TRISTAN LOVE SONG

After dinner father and I sat out on the porch in the soft, warm breeze
that waved a misty spring moonlight around us, and talked garden until
after ten o'clock. He was brilliant and delightful, but three times he
made trips to ice bowl and decanter on the sideboard.

"It will be a great relief and happiness to me if Nickols does sanction
and set the seal of artistic approval upon our plans," he said, with
feverish but happy eyes. "You see, Nickols will represent the
cosmopolitan in judgment upon the normally developed insular. I remember
once that Mr. Justice Harlan said that in an opinion on freight rates I
had sent up to him I had represented both the cosmopolitan and the
insular interest with astonishing equity, and I told him that I
considered that it took at least six