"The early gardener catches the rose bug--I'll remember that," Stella laughed. "Perhaps you would care to see the beginnings of our little garden?"

We moved down through the orchard and surveyed the pool. I suppose it did look bare and desolate to the outsider, who did not see it, as we did, with the eye of faith--the bare soil green with gra.s.s, the lip ringed with iris blades, the shrubbery bordered with a ma.s.s of blooms. At any rate, the Eckstroms betrayed no enthusiasm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: We are your neighbours ... you are very fortunate to have us for neighbours]

"Mr. Upton spaded all that lawn up himself, and we made the bench together," cried Stella.

"Well, well, you _must_ like to work," said Mr. Eckstrom. "It's so much simpler to sic a few men on the job. Besides, they can usually do it better."

Stella and I exchanged glances, and she cautioned me with her eyes. But politeness was never my strong point.

"Sometimes," said I, "it happens that a chap who wants a garden lacks the means to sic a few men on the job. Under those conditions he may perhaps be pardoned for labouring himself."

There was a slight silence broken by Stella, who said that we were going to get some goldfishes soon.

"We can give them some out of our pool, can't we, father?" the other girl said, with an evident effort to be neighbourly. "We really have too many."

"Certainly, certainly; have Peter bring some over to-night," her father replied.

"Oh, thank you!" Stella cried. "And will you have Peter tell us their names?"

"Their what?" exclaimed Mrs. Eckstrom.

"Oh, haven't they names? The poor things!" Stella said. "I shall name them as soon as they come."

"What a quaint idea," the girl said, with a smile. "Do you name all the creatures on the place?"

"Certainly," said Stella. "Come, I'll show you Epictetus and Luella."

This was a new one on me, but I kept silent, while she led us around the house, and lifted the plank which led up from the sundial lawn to the south door. Under it were two enormous toads and two small ones.

"Those big ones are Epictetus and Luella," she announced, "and, dear me, two children have arrived to visit them since morning! Let me see."

She dropped on her knees and examined the toads carefully, while they tried to burrow into the soil backward, to escape the sun. Our callers regarded her with odd expressions of mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and amazement--or was it pity?

"A son and daughter-in-law," she announced, rising. "They are Gladys and Gaynor."

A polite smile flickered on the faces of our three visitors, and died out in silence. Stella once more shot a glance at me.

We turned toward the house. "If you will excuse me for a few moments, I will make myself fit to brew you some tea," said my wife, holding open the door.

"That is very kind, but we'll not remain to-day, I think," Mrs.

Eckstrom replied. "We will just glance at what you have done to this awful old house. It was certainly an eyesore before you bought it."

"I _liked_ it all gray and weathered," Stella answered. "In fact, I didn't want it painted. But apparently you have to paint things to preserve them. Still, the Lord made wood before man made paint."

"He also made man before man made clothes," said I.

A polite smile from the girl followed this remark. Her father and mother seemed unaware of it. They gave our beautiful living-room a casual glance, and the man took in especially the books--in bulk.

"You are one of these literary chaps, I hear," he said. "I suppose you need all these books in your business?"

"Well, hardly all," I answered. "Some few I read for pleasure. Will you smoke?"

I offered him a cigar.

"Thanks, no," said he. "Doctor's orders. I can do nothing I want to.

Diet, and all that. d.a.m.n nuisance, too. Why, once I used to----"

"Father," said the girl, "don't you want to see if the car is ready?"

The look of animation which had come over the man's face when he began to talk about his ill health vanished again. He started toward the door.

"Let me," said I, springing ahead of him.

The car, of course, was waiting, the chauffeur sitting in it gazing vacantly down the road, with the patient stare of the true flunkey. I came back and reported. With a polite good-bye and an invitation to call and see their garden, our guests departed.

Stella and I stood in the south room and listened to the car rumble over the bridge. Then we looked at one another in silence.

Presently she picked up what appeared like a whole pack of calling cards from the table, and glanced at them.

"John," she said, "it's begun. They've called on me. I shall have to return the call. Are all the rest like them, do you suppose? Are they all so deadly dumb? Have they no playfulness of mind? I tried 'em out on purpose. They don't arrive."

"They're rich," said I. "Almost all rich people are bores. We bored them. The old man, though, seemed about to become quite animated on the subject of his stomach."

Stella laughed. "I'm _glad_ we were in old clothes," she said. "And aren't Epictetus and Luella darlings?"

"By the way," I cried, "why haven't I met them before?"

"I just discovered them this noon," she answered. "You were working at the time. I was saving them for a surprise after supper. I'm glad Gladys and Gaynor brought no grandchildren, though. It would have been hard to name so many correctly right off the bat, and it's terrible to start life with a wrong name."

"As Mike would say, it is surely," I answered. "That is why they were careful to call you Stella."

"Do you like the name?" she whispered, creeping close to me. "Oh, John, I'm glad we're not rich like them"--with a gesture toward the pack of calling cards--"I'm glad we can work in the garden with our own hands and play games with toads and just be ourselves. Let's _never_ be rich!"

"I promise," said I, solemnly.

Then we laughed and went to hear the hermit thrush.

Chapter XXI

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN

I SPENT considerably more money in July and August. Some of the items would be regarded as necessities even by our rural standards; some my farming neighbours would deem a luxury, if not downright folly. I was a green farmer then; I am a green farmer still; but as I began to get about the region a little more that first summer, especially at haying time, I was struck with the absurd waste of machinery brought about by insufficient care and lack of dry housing, and I began to do some figuring. All my rural neighbours, even Bert, left their ploughs, harrows, hay rakes, mowers, and even their carts, out of doors in rain and sun all summer, and many of them all winter. A soaking rain followed by a scorching sun seemed to me, in my ignorance, a most effective way of ruining a wagon, of shrinking and splitting hubs, of loosening the fastenings of shafts even in iron machinery. Neither do rusted bearings wear so long as those properly protected. I began to understand why our farmers are so poor, and I sent for Hard Cider.