book; and, deducting your pay for three quarters of a day, you now owe
me seventy-five cents. I don't suppose there's any use talking about the
fines I have got down against you?'
"'I don't believe there is,' said Abner.
"The librarian could not help smiling, so dejected was the tone in which
these last words were spoken.
"'By the way,' said he, 'how about your great fight you were talking
about--blackgum ag'in' thunder? How did that turn out?'
"Abner in his turn smiled.
"'Blackgum was split as fine as matches,' said he."
"I can't help feeling sorry for the old fellow," said the Next Neighbor,
when John had concluded his story. "I always have sympathy with great
ambitions."
"And if Joe Pearson had got far enough north," said the Mistress of the
House, "he would have found no eggs, but he might have stumbled over the
North Pole."
"It is a pity the old fellow had to tell his wife," said the Master of
the House. "Women ruin great ambitions by too much common-sense. A great
many of the inventions we now consider necessary would have been utterly
lost to us if some men's brains had not been a little addled. A woman
would have set them straight, and that would have been the end. That is
the reason so few women are inventors; they have too much sense."
"That is a very left-handed compliment," said the Daughter of the House.
"You are always decrying inventions, which is strange. How would you
like to sail a ship without steam?"
"It would be a great deal pleasanter, my dear, and much cleaner."
"There are patent contrivances for garden-work," said John Gayther, "and
I don't say that they don't help, especially in planting-time; but, like
the captain, I prefer the old ways that bring the gardener and the earth
close together. The old, simple instruments seem like friends. I feel as
if something went from me through the hoe-handle to the plants; and when
the seed drops from my hands instead of from a seeder, it seems to me it
takes a message direct from me to the earth that receives it."
* * * * *
The stories are all told. The winter has come. The orchard is stripped
of its leaves, and, sere and brown, they cover the garden paths and are
strewn over the box borders. The fruits are all garnered. The bare vines
that cover the summer-house are like dead memories of what has been. The
vegetable-beds are empty. The black frost has settled upon bloom and
foliage on the upper terrace. The sweet, blithe song of the red thrush
has ceased. The family have gone to a sunnier clime. And John Gayther
walks alone in his garden.