you get home to do it,
mother." But in her mind she added, "if you can find anything needing
it."

Then she kissed her 'good-bye,' promising to come again soon. "And I'll
take her a few flowers out of her own garden," she thought. "She will
love that better than anything. But I expect the garden has run wild by
this time."

She did not say as much to her mother, for she had learnt how much such
thoughts worried her; but she did to her father when he came to fetch her.
He only smiled though. "You wait till you see it, my girl," he said
mysteriously, "then you'll know how things have gone since you have been
away."

"There!" triumphantly, when they presently drew up at the gate.
"Do you say now that a poor lone man can't keep his place tidy while his
women-folk are away!" and Mona stared, wide-eyed with surprise, for,
instead of bushes all beaten down and tangled, weedy paths, and stripped
flower beds, as she had pictured, the whole garden seemed full.
Geraniums, phlox, mignonette, roses, snapdragons, and pansies made the
beds gay, while at the back of them great bushes of Michaelmas daisies and
chrysanthemums stood erect, neatly tied up to stakes.

"But how?--who--whenever did you find time, father?"

"I've never put a hand to it."

"Then it must have been the fairies," she laughed. "Flowers may grow by
themselves, but paths can't pull up their own weeds--I wish they could--
nor bushes tie themselves up to stakes."

Her father laughed too. "Well, never having seen a fairy, I can't
contradict. But I'm bound to say that Matthew Luxmore was never my idea
of one."

"Mr. Luxmore?"

"Yes, he's come two and three times a week, all the time your mother's
been in hospital, and tended the garden the same as if it had been his
own. Don't you call that acting the real Christian?"

"I do. Oh, father, I wish mother could see it. Wouldn't it make her
happy." Mona was touched almost to tears. "And doesn't it make you want
to do something nice for people in return! But everybody has been so kind
I don't know where to begin."

"The only way to begin," said Peter Carne, as he led Mona slowly up the
path, "is to take the first oppertoonity that comes along of doing a
kindness to one of them, and to keep on taking all the oppertoonities you
can. I know that the folks that have been good to us would be cut to the
heart if we were to talk about returns. You can't return such things as
they've done for us. You c