Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1906 — A Garden Girl [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Garden Girl

By Martha McCulloch-Wllliams

Bernice came down the garden walk with the grand air that always presages trouble. It was an adorable garden, sweet with June roses and clovepinks, spiced, too, with the breath ot honeysuckle and the keen burning fragrance of Sweet Betsys. The flowens were in the wide borders at either side of the walks. On beyond there were plots of homely kitchen gardening in full tilth and growth. Susan explained the fact—Susan who was pushing the wheel hoe steadfastly, rosy as Hebe and well nigh as enchanting, notwithstanding her plentiful freckles. Yet Bernice groaned at the sight. “Stop that! Come into the arbor!” she said. Even in this crisis she thought of her complexion rightly enough, too, since she felt that her face was not only her fortune, but that of the whole family. “Aunt Patrick and Lawrence will be here this afternoon on the 4 o’clock train,” she said impressively as Susan joined her in the green bower. “Only think! If they had come and found you this way I should have died of shame!” “Oh, I reckon not,” Susan said cheerJly. “Berry, you’re pretty well harden-

ed to shocks by this time. I’m sorry you’ve had to be hardened, but there wasn’t any other way. I couldn’t see daddy lack anything; not with all this big garden and strength to work it and a market just outside the gate fairly crying for all I have to sell.” “I know,’’ Bernice said impatiently. “We’ve fought that all out. I know you’d have done better if ydu had hired a gardener, but you’re the most obstinate thing. Now the question is, What shall we do about It? Aunt Patrick has cautioned me over and over that Lawrence was most fastidious”— “Well, I don’t want him—not for all his money!” Susan said, laughing heartily. Bernice looked at her in blank amaze. “Of course you don’t,” she echoed. “Whoever thought of such a thing? I was thinking of him—of my-

self. He is coming here to marry me—if it can be managed. Aunt Patrick and I agreed on that three months back. But how will he like having a sister-in-law who works with her hands and is as sunburnt as a haymaker? Not at all, being what he is. So I want you to go away, right off, up to the Grahams for, say, a week. If you’ll sleep in a mask and gloves and wash your face in buttermilk”— “Which I won’t do; that’s flat!” Susan cried. “I won’t go away either and leave everything to run to seed and weeds. Don’t talk to me of hiring somebody. Whoever you got would let things go to ruin. Besides, there’s nobody to be had. Moreover, I can’t and won’t leave daddy.” “So you’ll ruin my prospects,” Bernice said bitterly. Susan looked at her, swallowing hard. After a long breath she said huskily: “I don’t want to do it. Berry. God knows I’d like you to be rich and grand. You do crave it so. Tell me, do you think Lawrence by any chance remembers daddy or me? If he don’t—well, I see a way out" “What do you mean?” Bernice asked, flushing happily. Susan was looking away from her at a tiny deserted cottage, barely three rooms, and a playhouse porch which stood in a bit of grass at the garden’s farther end. It had been the coachman’s house back in the days when the Stanleys had had coachmen. Commonly it was let but all this year it had been empty. "I’ll rent the cottage and the garden from you. Miss Stanley,” Susan said gayly. “I’ll go to live in it with daddy while you entertain our rich kin. You can explain to Aunt Patrick she’ll agree with you that it was right and wise—and maybe come to see daddy some time—after dark. And you can tell the superfine Lawrence that we are away for daddy’s health. The poor dear certainly needs a change.” “But—people will talk so.” Bernice began. Susan put a hand over her Ups and ran on. “They won’t have the chance. You won’t be having tea fights and dinners when you’re staying alone except for old Miss Joe Jenkins. You can get her to chaperon you for even half asking. And I’ll let my customers think I’ve moved out so as to keep daddy quiet. Your gayety and company wert too much for his poor uerves. So ruu along and let me get to doing things. I’ve got to do them all in a whirlwind—it’s 10 now. Six hours is a mighty little while to hatch a conspiracy and turn it into a reality.” Susan had certainly the gift of prophecy. Aunt Patrick approved highly of her plan. Dear Lawrence, her stepson, she was sure would have been disgusted beyond measure at the thought of alliance with a family that demeaned itself to manual labor. If she had dreamed things were going so ill with her brother-in-law and her nieces she would have seen to it that the market garden scheme had been nipped in the bud. Since it was established and paying, let it go on through the season. Next year there might be changes. Lawrence would, she was sure, respond nobly to all legitimate claims. And the property was all his. She herself had only a life interest. Otherwise her nieces— Susan had stopped her there with a caressing pat on the fat hands overloaded with diamonds, saying she quite understood, but Aunt Patrick need not worry. Once Bernice was well settled, the house and garden and the little remnant of money would be more than enough for daddy and his garden girl. Bernice got through the first week fairly, although she was in a torment of trembling and Impatient hope. Lawrence seemed fascinated. If only Aunt Patrick would go on to the mountains and insist upon taking her lonely niece along everything would arrange itself beautifully. But Aunt Patrick had no , thought of such a thing. She was much

too comfortable where she was. Besides, in the mountains there was a danger she had not hinted to Bernice — namely, the Granger girl, whom Aunt Patrick hated, but with whom dear Lawrence had been, last winter, at least half in love. Better, much better, keep that desirable young man here in Crofton, where the Stanley establishment put him and Berry very nearly in a solitude of two. They rode or drove or walked together through the most part of the daylight and spent moonlight and twilight hours either at the piano or on the piazza. Susan could hear them singing—faintly, to be sure—while she sat almost nodding, and scrawling the letters that were to help in keeping up the masquerade. At first she had mailed them, but by and by that seemed to her useless, also risky, so she took to slipping up to the piazza In the earliest dawn and sliding her missives between slats of the shutters. But there fell a morning when, after a long hard day, she overslept. Still, since it was not much after sunrise, she ran out with the letter In her hand, never stopping to put up her long braids or to shroud herself In her big sunbonnet. And thus It fell out that she came full upon dear Lawrence, whom mischievous fate had awakened early upon this morning of all in the year. It was certainly fate’s doing. Lawrence had not slept all night, because, he was uncertain as to his own heart. With part of it he loved Bernice dearly, but there was another part, which was somehow hungry, no less afraid. Possibly It was this side of him that leaped through his eyes as they rested upon Susan’s enchanting freshness, her sweet simplicity and innocent courage. In quick confusion she let fall the letter. As he stooped to pick ft up so did she, and then somehow their hands touched and he found himself thrilling through and through. And then, involuntarily, he read the superscription and, recalling Susan’s picture intuitively, understood. He took her hand between both his own, wishing madly that he dared kiss each callous on the pink palm of it, and said, smiling and shaking his head: “The Ogre has got you. Princess Susan, if you did run away from him. He will eat you up bodily unless you promise to come straight home.” “But—but what will Berry say—and Aunt Patrick?” Susan faltered, letting her hand lie In his clasp. She also was thrilling with quite unreasonable happiness. Lawrence smiled down at her confidently and took her other hand, saying: “There’s just one thing they can say properly—‘Bless you, my children.’ And I don’t in the least doubt that they will.” You will find no old stock at our new store, everything is new and up-to-date.

Duvall & Lundy.

IN QUICK CONFUSION SHE BET FALL THB LETTER.