Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 238, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1916 — The IDYL of TWIN FIRES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The IDYL of TWIN FIRES

by WALTER PRICHARD EATON

CHAPTER XVl—Continued. —l6 We advanced to meet them, and as IglaOcedatmy wife, and then at thermple female, I was enviously stmek with their resemblance to a couple of strange dogs approaching each other warily. I fully expected to see the Stout lady sniff ; ahe had that kind of a nose. “How dp yon do,” said she.—-Itaa-yra, TCokstromZ I presume thia is Mr. and Mrs. Upton?” Stella nodded. "We are neighbors.” she continued, with an air which said, “You are .very fortunate to have us for neighbors,” “We live in the first place toward the village. This Is Mr. Eckstrom, and my < daughter, Miss Julia.” “We can hardly offer our hands,” said Stella. "Will you forgive us? You see, we are making a garden, and it’s rather messy work.” “You like to work In the garden yourself, I see,” said Mrs. Eckstrom. “I, too, enjoy it. I frequently pick rose-bugs. Ipick them before breakfast, very early, while they are stilt sleepy. I find it Is the only way to gave my tea roses.” "The early gardener catches the rosebug—i’ll remember that,” Stella laughed. “Perhaps you would care to see the beginnings of our little garden?” We moved down through the orchard and surveyed the pool. I suppose it did look bare and desolate to the outsider, who did not see it, aS we did, with the eye of faith—the bare soil green with grass, the lip ringed with Iris blades, the shrubbery bordered with a mass of blooms. At any rate, tire Eckstroms betrayed no enthusiasm. “Mr. Upton spaded all that lawn up himself, and we made the bench together,” cried Stella." " “Well, you must like to work,” said Mr. Eckstrom. “It’s so much simpler to sic a few men on the job. Besides, they can usually do it better.” Stella and I exchanged glances, and ahe cautioned me with her eyes. But politeness was never my strong point. “Sometimes,” said I, “it happens that a chap who wants a garden lacks the means to sic a few men on the job. Under those conditions he may, perhaps, be pardoned for laboring himself.”

There was a slight silence broken by Stella, who said that we were going to get some goldfishes soon. “We can give them some out of our pool, can’t we, father?” the other girl said, with an evident effort to be neighborly. “We really have too many.” “Certainly, certainly; have Peter bring some over tonight,” her father replied. “Oh, thank you!” Stella cried. “And will you have Peter tell us their names ?’’ “Their what?” exclaimed -Mrs, Eckstrom. “Oh, haven’t they names? The poor things!” Stella said. “I shall name them as soon as they come.” “What a quaint idea,” the girl said, with a smile. “Do you name all the creatures on the place?" . . “Certainly ” said Stella. “Come, I’ll show you Epictetus and Luella.” This was a new one on me, but 1 kept silent, while she led us ground the house and lifted the plank which led up from the sundial lawn to the south door. Under It were two enormous toads and two small ones. “Those big ones are Epictetus and Luella.” she announced, “and, dear me, two children have arrived to em since morning! Let me see.” She dropped on her knees and examined the toads carefully, while they tried to burrow into the soil backward, to escape the sun. Our callers regarded her with odd expressions of mingled amusement and amazement —or was it

A son and daughter-ln-law, she announced. rising. “They are Gladys and Gaynor.” A polite smile flickered on the faces of our three visitors and died out in silence. Stella once more shot a glance at me. ~ We turned' toward the house. “If you will excuse me for a few moments. I will make myself fit to brew you some tea.” said my wife, holding open the door. "That is very kind, but we’ll not remain today. I think,” Mrs. Eckstrom replied. "We will just glance at what you have done to this awful old house. Ttwas certainly an eyesore before you bought it” “I liked It all gray and weathered/ Stella answered. “In fact. I didn’t want It painted. But apparently you have to paint things to preserve them. Still, the Lord made wood before man made paint.” "He also made man before man made clothes,” said I. A polite smile from the girl followed thin remark. Her father and mother seemed unaware of it. They gave our beautiful living room a casual glance, and the man took in especially the books—ln bulk. “You are one of these literary chaps. I bear,” he said. "I suppose you need all these books in your business?” “Well, hardly all,” I answered, “gome few I read tor pleasure. Will fvo smokeF CJ ~

1 offered him a cigar. “Thanks, no,” said he. "Doctor's orders. I can do nothing I want to. Diet, and an that. Bally nuisance, too. Why, once I used to—” • • the girl, “don’t you want to see If the car is ready?” The look of animation which had come over the man’s face when be began to talk about his health vanished -again. lie started toward the deer. “Let me,” said I, springing ahead of him. The car, of course, was waiting, the chauffeur sitting in it gazing vacantly down the road, with the patient, stare of the true flunky. I came back and reported. With a polite good-by and an invitation to call and see their garden the guests departed. Stella and I stood In the south room and listened to the car rumble over the bridge. Then we looked at one another in silence. Presently she picked up what appeared like a whole pack of calling cards from the table, and glanced at

“John,” she said, “it’s begun. They’ve called on me. I shall have to return the call. Are all the Test like them, do you suppose? Are they all so deadly dumb? Have they no playfulness eff mind? I tried ’em out on purpose. They don’t arrive.” “They’re rich,” said I. “Almost all rich people are bores. We bored them. The old man, though, seemed about to become quite animated on the subject of his stomach.” Stella laughed. “I’m glad we were In old clothes,” she said. “And aren't Epictetus and Luella darlings?” “By the way,” I cried, “why haven’t I met them before?” “I just discovered them this noon,” she answered. “You were working at Hie time. I was saving them for a surprise after supper. I’m glad Gladys and Gaynor brought no grandchildren, though. *lt would have been bard to name so many correctly right off the bat, and it’s terrible to start life with a wrong name.” “As Mike would say, it is surely.” I answered. “That Is why they were careful to call you Stella.” “Do you like she whispered, creeping close to me. “Oh, John, I’m glad we’re not rich like them” — with a gesture toward the of calling cards—“l’m glad we can work In the garden with our own hands and play games with toads and just be ourselves. Let’s never be rich!” “I promise,” said I, solemnly. Then we laughed and went to hear the hermit thrush.

CHAPTER XVII.

Autumn In the Garden. I spent considerably more money in July and August Some of the items would be regarded aa necessities even by our rural standardsTsome my farming neighbors would deem a luxury, if not downright folly. I was a green farmer then; I am a green farmer still; but as I began to get about the region g little more that first summer, especially at haying time, I was struck with the absurd waste of machinery brought about by insufficient care and lack of dry housing, and I began to do some figuring. All my rural neighbors, even Bert, left their plows, harrows, hay rakes, mowers, and even their carts, out of doors in rain and sun all summer, and many of them all winter. A soaking rain followed by a scorching sun seemed to me, in my ignorance, a most effective way of ruining a wagon, of shrinking and splitting hubs, of loosening the fastenings of shafts even in iron machinery. Neither do rusted bearings wear so long as those properly protected. I began to understand why our farmers are so poor, and I sent for Hard Cider.

Just behind the barn he built me a lean-to shed, about seventy-five feet long, open toward the east, and shingled rainproof. It cost me SSOO, but every night every piece of farm machinery and every farm wagon''went under It, and the mo wing machine was further covered with a tarpaulin. For more than a year my shed was the only one of the kind In Bentford, and that next winter I used to see machinery standing behind ininis, half buried In snow and ice, going to pieces for want of care. I verily believe that the New England farmer of today is the most shiftless mortal north of the Mason and Dixon line—and he hasn’t hookworm for an excuse. My next expenditure was for a cement root cellar, which scarcely needs defense, as I had no silo on the barn, and it would not pay to install one for only twd cows. But the third item filled Mike with scorn. I had been making him milk the cows out of doors for some weeks, taking a tip from one on him tosee thatliei washed his hands properly and pub qn one of the white milking coats I had purchased. His utter contempt for that white rig was cpinldal, ~but when I told him that I was going to have a cork and asphalt brick floor laid in the cow shed he was speechless. He had endured the white apron, and the spectacle of the tuberculin test (the latter because the law made him), but an expensive floor

to the Darn was too ranch. He gave me one pitying look, and walked away. The floor was laid, however, and when it was completed, and the drainage adjusted, Hard Cider trimmed up the supports of the bam cellar door and the two cellar window frames behind, and built In substantial screens. Then I showed them to him, and told him he was to keep them closed under penalty of bls job, and he was further to sprinkle chloride of lime on the manure once a week. “Well, I never seen screens on a bam before,” said he, “and I guess nobody else iver did. Shure, it’s to be spcndln’ your money azy ye are. Are yez goin’ to put In a bathroom for the horse ?” Bert was almost as scornful of the screens as Mike, though he understood the X'ork-asphalt floor, haVing, in fact, unconsciously persuaded me to install it by telling me how the cows of a dairyman in the next town had been injured by slipping on a concrete floor. My floor had the advantage of concrete, but gave the cows a tooting, barn In. Bentford before, however, nor any chloride of lime used. This was too much for Bert. But Mrs. Bert was interested. After our screens bad been on ten. days and the barn cellar had been limed, Mrs. Pillig pointed out that the number of flies caught on the fly paper on- kjtchen door had decreased at least 400 per cent “And I think what’s there now come down from your place,” shp added to Mrs. Bert. The next thing we knew, Bert was talking of screening his stable. Truth compels me to admit, however, that he never got beyond the talking stage.

in [Ilf? laCu "t tUI our garden expenses were a mere song, yet we had begun to plant and plan for the following year as soon as the pool was done. We knew we were green, and we did not scorn the advice of books and still more of our best practical friend—the head gardener of one of the large estates, who knew the exactions of our climate and the conditions of our soil. “Plant yftur perennial seeds in as rich and cool a place as you can,” he told us, “and expect to lose at least three-fourths of your larkspur. When your foxglove plants are large enough to transplant, make long trenches in the vegetable garden, with manure at the bottom and four inches of soil on too, and set in the plants. Do it early in September if you can, so that they can make roots before our early frosts. Then you’ll have fine plants for bedding tn spring. If you buy any plants, get ’em from a nursery farther north if possible. They have to be very hardy here.” We went through the seed catalogues as one wanders amid manifold temptations, but we kept to our purpose of planting only the simpler, more oldfashioned blooms at present. In addition to the bulbs, which came later, we resolved to sow pansies, sweet William, larkspur, Canterbury bells, foxglove, peach bells, oriental poppies, platycodon, veronica, mallow (for backing to the pool especially), hollyhocks, phlox (both the early variety, the divarlcata, blooming in May, and, of course, the standard decussata. The May phlox we secured in plants). All these seeds were carefully planted In the new beds between the pool and the orchard, where we could water them plentifully, and Stella, with the instincts of the true gardener, babied and tended those seedlings almost as if they were human. Without her care, probably, they would never have pulled through the dry, hot weeks which followed.

—Weused to walk down to see them every morning after breakfast, when Stella watered them, dipping the water from the pool and sending Antony and Cleopatra scurrying. Antony and Cleopatra were the goldfish which the Eckstroms, true to their promise, had sent us. The poor things were unnamed when they arrived, but their aspect—the one dark and sinuous, the other pompously golden betrayed their identity. Stella called a few days after their arrival to convey our thanks —carefully waiting till she saw the Eckstroms driving out in their car! Their curiosity having been satisfied regarding us, and our thanks having been rendered to them, further intercourse lapsed. We have never tried to maintain relations with those of our neighbors who bore us, or With whom we have nothing in common. Life is too short. - Not only did Stella water the seedlings religiously, but she kept the soil mulched and the weeds out, working with her gloved hands in the earth. All the seeds came up well save the phlox, with which we had small luck, and the Papaver Orientalls, with which we had no luck at all. Not a seed came up. and not a seed ever has come up"tn our soli. We have had' to beg plants from other people. Even as the gardener predicted, the tender little larkspur plants mysteriously died. We ringed them with stiff paper, we surrounded them with coal ashes, we even sprayed them with bordeaux and arsenate of lead. But they still were devoured at the roots or the tops, or mysteriously gave up the ghost with no apparent cause. We started with two hundred, and when autumn came we had just thirty left. “Still," said Stella, cheerfully, “thirty will make quite a brave show.” “If they survive the winter,” said L gloomily. "I’ve not the patience to be a gardener.” “It is a good deal like reform,” Stella replied. —w ‘—"'c '

(TO BE CONTINUED.)