Over Paradise Ridge

"I charge myself at twelve and a half cents. Are you worth about--about fifteen?" he asked in a business-like tone of voice, but I saw a twitch at the corners of his mouth that made me boil with rage.

"Put me down at six and a quarter for the present," I answered, haughtily.

"Down she goes," he answered, as he thus minimized me with his pencil and put the book back in his pocket. "Now, where do you want me to heave in the lilacs so as to get the two corners of the garden to guide the rows by? Shall they run north and south or east and west? It really doesn't make much difference."

"East and west, then," I answered, calmly, though my hand clenched over the hollyhock seeds which I had put in an envelope in the pocket of my corduroy skirt. It was cruelly thoughtless of him--this selection of the lilacs for the corner-stones of the garden after making me so happy, not a month ago, with that lovely sentiment about wanting to plant the hollyhock seeds first in memory of the dolls of our youth. "Peter will enjoy looking down the rows from the living-room window better than across them," I added, quickly, for fear he would humiliate me by remembering that he had forgotten the hollyhock seeds he had stolen for me.

"Say where and I'll dig for you," he said; but I saw a glint of something fairly shoot from his eyes.

"Here," I said, and stood at a nice right angle from the corner of the house and the old cedar-tree he had said he could nail the wires to to save a post, when he had to put up a fence.

He came over promptly with the spade and poised it to dig into the ground--and my heart.

Then he hesitated, and looked at me quickly for a second. Then he threw down the spade and said, quietly: "I'll go get that rotted stump dirt before I break ground for the lilacs, and you can think about things while you wait." With that he lifted the wheelbarrow and trundled out of the situation, leaving me in the depths of a hurt uncertainty.

But if Samuel Foster Crittenden thought I was as stupid as that, he had a chance to learn better--at least I thought I would give him one. I'm not sure yet that I did.

As soon as he was out of sight I flew to the end of the garden, where I thought the row of hollyhocks would make a lovely background for all the long lines of vegetables and flowers running into it, sighted with my eye, ran a trench with the rusty old hoe, flung in my seeds, and covered it up in less time than it takes to tell it. When Sam came back I had spaded out at least two and a half shovelfuls of dirt, that I found surprisingly heavy, from the hole for the first lilac. I saw him start and hesitate as if about to say something, and then I think--I think, but I can't be sure--his eyes rested on my hasty and surreptitious gardening.