't a nat'ral way o' livin', Lois; and I
believe it leaves folks too much time to get into mischief. When folks
hasn't business enough of their own to attend to, they're free to put
their fingers in other folks' business. And they get sot up, besides.
My word for it, it ain't healthy for mind nor body. And you needn't
think I'm doin' what I complain of, for your business is my business.
Good-bye, girls. I'll buy a cook-book the next time I go to New London,
and learn how to make suflles. Lois shan't hold that whip over me."

CHAPTER X.

LOIS'S GARDEN.

Lois went at her gardening the next morning, as good as her word. It
was the last of March, and an anticipation of April, according to the
fashion the months have of sending promissory notes in advance of them;
and this year the spring was early. The sun was up, but not much more,
when Lois, with her spade and rake and garden line, opened the little
door in the garden fence and shut it after her. Then she was alone with
the spring. The garden was quite a roomy place, and pretty, a little
later in the season; for some old and large apple and cherry trees
shadowed parts of it, and broke up the stiff, bare regularity of an
ordinary square bit of ground laid out in lesser squares. Such
regularity was impossible here. In one place, two or three great apple
trees in a group formed a canopy over a wide circuit of turf. The hoe
and the spade must stand back respectfully; there was nothing to be
done. One corner was quite given up to the occupancy of an old cherry
tree, and its spread of grassy ground beneath and about it was again
considerable. Still other trees stood here and there; and the stems of
none of them were approached by cultivation. In the spaces between,
Lois stretched her line and drew her furrows, and her rows of peas and
patches of corn had even so room enough.

Grass was hardly green yet, and tree branches were bare, and the
upturned earth was implanted. There was nothing here yet but the Spring
with Lois. It is wonderful what a way Spring has of revealing herself,
even while she is hid behind the brown and grey wrappings she has
borrowed from Winter. Her face is hardly seen; her form is not
discernible; but there is a breath and a smile and a kiss, that are
like nothing her brothers and sisters have to give. Of them all,
Spring's smile brings most of hope and expectation with it. And there
is a perfume Spring wears, which is the rarest, and most u