nged pile
of sticks under which lurks a morsel.

To=night I called upon Georgiana and sketched the arrested tragedy
of the morning. She watched me curiously, and then dashed into a
little treatise on the celebrated friendships of man for the lower
creatures, in fact and fiction, from camels down to white mice.
Her father must have been a remarkably learned man. I didn't
like this. It made me somehow feel as though I were one of Asp's
Fables, or were being translated into English as that old school-room
horror of Androclus and the Lion. In the bottom of my soul I don't
believe that Georgiana cares for birds, or knows the difference
between a blackbird and a crow. I am going to send her a little
story, "The Passion of the Desert." Mrs. Walters is now confident
that Georgiana regrets having broken off her engagement. But then
Mrs. Walters can be a great fool when she puts her whole mind to
it.

XIV

In April I commence to scratch and dig in my garden.

To-day, as I was raking off my strawberry bed, Georgiana, whom I
have not seen since the night when she satirized me, called from
the window:

"What are you going to plant this year?"

"Oh, a little of everything," I answered, under my hat. "What are
_you_ going to plant this year?"

"Are you going to have many strawberries?"

"It's too soon to tell: they haven't bloomed yet. It's too soon
to tell when they _do_ bloom. Sometimes strawberries are like
women: Whole beds full of showy blossoms; but when the time comes
to be ripe and luscious, you can't find them."

"Indeed."

"'Tis true, 'tis pity."

I had always supposed that to a Southern gentleman woman was not a
berry but a rose. What does he hunt for in woman as much as bloom
and fragrance? But I don't belong to the rose-order of Southern
women myself. Sylvia does. Why did you send me that story?"

"Didn't you like it?"

"No. A woman couldn't care for a story about a man and a tigress.
Either she would feel that she was too much left out, or suspect
that she was too much put in. The same sort of story about a lion
and a woman--that would be better."

I raked in silence for a minute, and when I looked up Georgiana
was gone. I remember her saying once that children should be kept
tart; but now and then I fancy that she would like to keep even a
middle-aged man in brine. Who knows but that in the end I shall
sell my place to the Cobbs and move away?

Five more days of April,