I turned from Nickols' raillery and surveyed the great American garden.

The weeks had flown from May to late July and father's plans were

beginning to be materialized. Where the sunken garden had been filled in

a wide stone well house, the like of which can be found at many of the

farmhouses in the Harpeth Valley, had been built and a chain wheel and

bucket drew up the water from the deep cistern, which was supplied with

underground pipes from the south wing of the Poplars.

"There is no water as soft as open-top cistern water, aerated by a chain

and bucket," father had informed me, and he and Dabney consumed buckets

of it, while Mammy refused anything else for cooking purposes and

insisted on a nightly bath of it for my face. A white clematis in full

bloom clambered over the eaves of the low stone house and a blush rose

nodded at its door, beside which was placed a rough bench made of square

stones and two large slabs, equally moss-covered and worn.

"It is growing to be perfectly wonderful, Nickols," I said, as if I had

seen it for the first time, while my eyes followed the sweep of the

flagstone walk from the well house beneath the old graybeard poplars out

past stretches of velvety lawn, with groups of shrubs and trees casting

deep shadows even to the kitchen garden, whose long rows of vegetables,

bordered with old-fashioned blooming herbs and savories, led the

observer out into the meadows to the Home Farm and beyond to the dim

line of Paradise Ridge. "It is different and distinctive and--and

American," I added.

"After this garden and the school are finished and a few of the

unfortunate restorations taken away from some of the old houses, like

the porch at Mrs. Sproul's and that bathroom addition of Morgan's, I am

going to bring Jeffries down in his private car and it will be difficult

to keep him from offering to buy Goodloets and have it all shipped up

the Hudson. Really, Charlotte, we have seen a vision of the future

materialize here and we ought to stand with hats off."

"Whose vision?" I asked, as I stood and let the truth of his statement

sink in.

"The parson's spiritual vision perhaps filtering through your father's

mentality, which has welded past, present and future. At least, that is

the way I see it with the material eye, which is all I have to view it

with--if we can call the recognition of beauty and completeness

material."

"Now Mikey is nice and clean and we can go to Minister to play, thank

you, Aunt Charlotte," at this point young Charlotte broke in to say,

thus flinging us a line to haul us out of depths that were slightly over

our heads. "Isn't he lovely?" And she gazed upon her new-found comrade

with open admiration and self-congratulation.




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