he
express wagon from the stable.

Maria and I sat and talked for some time about _The_ _Man from
Everywhere_, the chickens, and the location of the rose beds. She is
surprisingly keen about flowers, considering that it is quite ten years
since her own home in the country was broken up, but then I think this
is the sort of knowledge that stays by one the longest of all. I hope
that I have succeeded in convincing her that _The Man_ is not company to
be bothered about, but a comfortable family institution to come and go
as he likes, to be taken easily and not too seriously.

When the moon disappeared beyond the river woods, we went to the
southwest porch, and there decided that the piece of lawn where we had
some uninteresting foliage beds one summer was the best place for the
roses and we might possibly have a trellis across the north wall for
climbers. Would you plant roses in rows or small separate beds? And how
about the soil? But perhaps the plan you are sending me will explain all
this.

It was more than an hour before the men returned, and, not having found
Barney, Bart had signed for the poultry in order to leave the express
agent free to go home, and had left word at the stable for them to send
the crates up as soon as the long wagon returned from Leighton, whither
it had gone with trunks.

After much discussion we decided that the fowls should be housed for
the night in the small yard back of the stable, where the Infant's cow
(a present from _my_ mother) spends her nights under the shed.

"Did you find any signs of a chicken house on the place when you first
came?" asked Maria, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if its location was the
only thing now to be considered.

"Yes, there was one directly in the fence line at the eastern gap where
we see the Three Brothers Hills," said Bart, "and I've always intended
to plant a flower bed of some sort there both to hide the gap in the
wall and that something may be benefited by the hen manure of decades
that must have accumulated there!"

"How would the place do for the new hen-house?" pursued Maria,
relentlessly.

"Not at all!" I snapped very decidedly: "it is directly in the path the
cool summer winds take on their way to the dining room, and you know at
best fowl houses are not bushes of lemon balm!"

"Then why not locate your bed of good-smelling things in the gap, and
sup on nectar and distilled perfume," said _The Man from Everywhere_,
soothingly.

"The v