the old ruin into the sort of a country place that one reads
about and imagines only millionaires may have. They say that when Old
Skinflint Holden saw the transformation he stood stock-still, then tied
his team to the artistic hitching post under the old elms and went in
search of Rollins. He found him in the orchard in the laziest of
hammocks literally worshipping the flowering trees all about him. Old
Skinflint Holden was awed.

"Jehohasaphat! Bern, how did you do it?"

"Oh," smiled the artist, "we cleaned and patched it, put on a new bit
here and there and sort of nursed it into shape. Doc Philipps gave us
bulbs and seeds and loads of advice and then Elizabeth, I guess, sort of
loved it into a home."

"Well--I guess," mused Skinflint Holden. "Must have cost you a pretty
penny?"

"Why, no, it didn't. I'm telling you it wasn't a matter of dollars so
much as love. If you use plenty of that you can economize on the money
somewhat. Of course, it means work but love always means service, you
know."

Old Skinflint Holden couldn't understand that sort of talk. It was said
that love was one of the things he knew nothing about. His great star
was money. He had had a chance to buy the old tavern but had seen no
possibilities in it of any kind. So he had passed it up and now a man
whose star was love and home had made a paradise of the hopeless ruin.

"And I'll be danged if he didn't have a whole small field of them there
blue lilies that the children calls flags, over to one corner looking so
darn pretty, like a chunk of sky had dropped there. I'd a never believed
it if I hadn't saw it. I guess Doc Philipps didn't give him them."

Rollins is a great crony of Doc Philipps who almost any day of the year
may be caught burrowing in the ground. For Doc Philipps is a tree maniac
and father to every little green growing thing. He knows trees as a
mother knows her children and he never sets foot outside his front gate
without having tucked somewhere into the many pockets about his big
person a stout trowel, some choice apple seeds, peach and cherry stones
or seedlings of trees and shrubs. In every ramble, and he is a great
walker, he searches for a spot where a tree seedling might grow to
maturity and the minute he finds such a place off comes his coat, back
goes his broad-rimmed hat and out comes the trowel and seed. Travelers
driving along the road and catching sight of the big man on his knees say
to each