's help in a
piece of work which it did not seem possible for him to fail in.

The side porch has a great curving, bulging iron trellis for the
honeysuckle, and I keep the vines so thinned out that I can have boxes
of flowers growing on the porch railing, which only need what sunlight
comes filtering through the honeysuckle. By cutting the blossoms every
day I obtain the result I wish, and on this occasion I had cut all I
could reach, and I asked Jimmie to cut those which were beyond me.

These boxes at the bottom were only as wide as the porch railing, but
flared out on both sides in order to hold more earth, and all were
painted green. Now in that particular box, shaded by the honeysuckle,
I had, with infinite care, coaxed sun-loving dwarf nasturtiums to grow,
because their gorgeous colouring looked so well next to the box which
held my ferns.

I had planted the nasturtiums in early spring in the box in the
greenhouse, shading the colours from pale yellow at each end to a
glorious orange and crimson in the middle. Each plant was perfect of
its kind and growing and blooming riotously before I took the box,
which was some fourteen feet long, and with my own hands nailed it to
the porch railing, and its ends to two pillars.

It never occurred to me that Jimmie would be foolish enough to try to
_stand_ on the edge of that box, for of course, while I am no
carpenter, I drove my nails to cope with wind-storms, not a great man,
who--oh, well! I might have known that Jimmie would do something.

He could have reached all I wanted from the porch, but of course,
though I only stepped through the French window to lay my flowers down,
in that instant Jimmie had sprung upon that slanting edge of my poor,
frail little box, and in that instant the mischief was done. The box
tilted and flung Jimmie forward against the curving trellis, which
began to creak and groan alarmingly. All my precious nasturtiums were
pitched headlong into the flower-beds below, and for once Jimmie
shrieked my name in accents of the acutest entreaty.

"Faith!" he shouted, below his breath. "Faith, for God's sake run here
and catch me! This damned thing is giving way. Haul me back. Oh, my
coat won't save me! Leggo my coat-tails. Put your arms around my
waist. Stop laughing! Put--your--arms--around my waist--I say--and
haul me back! Brace your feet and pull!"

I did as he desired, bracing my feet and dragging him back to safety by
his leat