hair and ruffling the leaves of the papers.
In one corner, in a splotch of bright sunshine, lay the bulldog,
watching a strayed blue-bottle darting in panic hither and thither near
the ceiling.

Outside a colored maid--a new acquisition of Aunt Daphne's--named
Cassandra, black (in Doctor Southall's phrase) "as the inside of a cow,"
and dressed in a trim cotton-print "swing-clear," was sweeping the big
porch. Over the little cabin by the kitchens, morning-glories twirled
their young tendrils. Before its step stood a low shuck-bottom "rocker"
with a crimson dyed sheep-skin for upholstery, on which was curled a
brindle cat. Through its door Valiant could see a spool what-not, with
green pasteboard partitions, a chromo framed in pine-covers on the wall
and on a shelf a creton-covered can full of bustling paper lighters. In
the garden three darkies were laboring, under the supervision of Uncle
Jefferson. The unsightly weeds and lichen were gone from the graveled
paths, and from the fountain pool, whose shaft now spouted a slender
spray shivered by the breeze into a million diamonds, which fell back
into the pool with a tintinabulant trickle and drip. The drunken wild
grape-vines now trailed with a pruned and sobered luxuriance and the
clamor of hammer and saw came from the direction of the lake, where a
carpenter refurbished the ruined summer-house.

The master of Damory Court closed the magazine with a sigh. "If I could
only do it all at once!" he muttered. "It takes such a confounded time.
Four days they've been working now, and they haven't done much more than
clean up." He laughed, and threw the magazine at the dog who dodged it
with injured alacrity. "After all, Chum," he remarked, "it's been thirty
years getting in this condition. I guess we're doing pretty well."

He picked up a plump package and weighed it in his hand. "There
are the seeds for the wilderness garden. Bachelor's-buttons and
love-lies-bleeding and Jacob's-ladder and touch-me-nots and
daffy-down-dillies and phlox and sweet-williams and love-in-a-mist
and four-o'clocks--not a blessed hot-house name among 'em, Chum! Don't
they sound homey and old-fashioned? The asters and dahlias and scarlet
geraniums are for nearer the house, and the pansies and petunias for
that sunny stretch down by the lake. Then there'll be sunflowers around
the kitchens and a trumpet-vine over the side of this porch."

He stretched luxuriously. "I'll take a hand at it myself to-m