The Garden, You, and I | Page 4

latest rabbit news with thrilling detail. All this and much more made up
to-day, one of red letters.
Yesterday, Monday, was quite different, and if not absolutely black,
was decidedly slate coloured. It is only when some one of the
household is positively ill that the record must be set down in black
characters, for what else really counts? Why is it that the city folk
persist in judging all rural days alike, that is until they have once really
lived in the country, not merely boarded and tried to kill time and their
own digestions at one and the same moment.
Such exceptional days as yesterday should only be chronicled now and
then to give an added halo to happy to-morrows,--disagreeables are
remembered quite long enough by perverse human nature.
Yesterday began with the pipe from the water-back bursting, thereby
doing away with hot water for shaving and the range fire at the same
time. The coffee resented hurry, and the contact with an oil stove
developed the peanutty side of its disposition, something that is latent
in the best and most equable of brands.
The spring timetable having changed at midnight Sunday, unobserved
by Evan, he missed the early train, which it was especially important
that he should take. Three other men found themselves in the same
predicament, two being Bluffers and one a Plotter. (These are the
names given hereabout to our two colonies of non-natives. The Bluffers
are the people of the Bluffs, who always drive to the station; the
Plotters, living on a pretty tract of land near the village that was
"plotted" into house-lots a few years ago, have the usual newcomer's
hallucination about making money from raising chickens, and always
walk.)
After a hasty consultation, one of the Bluffers telephoned for his
automobile and invited the others to make the trip to town with him. In
order to reach the north turnpike that runs fairly straight to the city, the

chauffeur, a novice in local byways, proposed to take a short cut
through our wood road, instead of wheeling into the pike below
Wakeleigh.
This wood road holds the frost very late, in spite of an innocent
appearance to the contrary; this fact Evan stated tersely. Would a
chauffeur of the Bluffs listen to advice from a man living halfway
down the hill, who not only was autoless but frequently walked to the
station, and therefore to be classed with the Plotters? Certainly not;
while at the same moment the owner of the car decided the matter by
pulling out his watch and murmuring to his neighbour something about
an important committee meeting, and it being the one day in the month
when time meant money!
Into the road they plunged, and after several hair-breadth lurches, for
the cut is deep and in places the rocks parallel with the roadway, the
turnpike was visible; then a sudden jolt, a sort of groan from the motor,
and it ceased to breathe, the heavy wheels having settled in a
treacherous spot not wholly free from frost, its great stomach, or
whatever they call the part that holds its insides, wallowed hopelessly
in the mud!
The gentlemen from the Bluffs deciding that, after all, there was no real
need of going to town, as they had only moved into the country the
week previous, and the auto owner challenged to a game of billiards by
his friend, they returned home, while the Plotter and Evan walked back
two miles to the depot and caught the third train!
At home things still sizzled. Father had an important consultation at the
hospital at ten; ringing the stable call for the horses, he found that Tim,
evidently forgetting the hour, had taken them, Evan's also being of the
trio, to the shoer half an hour before. There was a moment's
consternation and Bertel left the digging over of my hardy beds to
speed down to the village on his bicycle, and when the stanhope finally
came up, father was as nearly irritable as I have ever seen him, while
Tim Saunders's eyes looked extra small and pointed. Evidently Bertel
had said things on his own account.

Was an explosion coming at last to end twelve years of out-of-door
peace, also involving my neighbour and domestic standby, Martha
Corkle Saunders?
No; the two elderly men glanced at each other; there was nothing of the
domineering or resentful attitude that so often renders difficult the
relation of master and man--"I must be getting old and forgetful," quoth
father, stepping into the gig.
"Nae, it's mair like I'm growin' deef in the nigh ear," said Tim, and
without further argument they drove away.
I was still pondering upon the real inwardness of the matter, when the
boys came home to luncheon. Two hungry, happy