The Garden, You, and I | Page 4

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 boys are a tonic at any time, and for a time I buttered bread--though alack, the real necessity for so doing has long since passed--when, on explaining father's absence from the meal, Ian said abruptly, "Jinks! grandpa's gone the day before! he told Tim Tuesday at 'leven, I heard him!"
But, as it chanced, it was a slip of tongue, not memory, and I blessed Timothy Saunders for his Scotch forbearance, which Evan insists upon calling prudence.
My own time of trial came in the early afternoon. During the more than ten years that I have been a gardener on my own account, I have naturally tried many experiments and have gradually come to the conclusion that it is a mistake to grow