"That's because we are willing to learn," said I, and left him still looking at the six-inch high stalks.

(Incidentally, I may remark that I did beat everybody in the market, and made about $15 extra by my simple experiment.)

But Stella's chief joy in the garden was in the surprises of the blooms: in the stately clumps of Darwins against the pillars of the rose aqueduct; in the golden bursts of daffodils here and there where we had sown a few bulbs and forgotten the spot; in the _Narcissus poeticus_, which were in their element close to the brook and did verily look at themselves in the tiny pool below the dam; in the pale gold ring of the great Empress narcissus bordering the iris spears around the large pool; above all, perhaps, in the maroon of the trilliums which we had brought home from that first wonderful walk in the woods. Not alone her heart, but her feet, danced with the daffodils, and I could hear her of a morning as I worked, out in the garden singing or bringing in great bunches of blooms to decorate the house.

On several afternoons we made further trips to the deep woods after wild-flower plants, and set them in along our brook. The thrush had returned, the apple blossoms had made all the garden fragrant while the plants were budding (this year they were carefully sprayed twice, for, though it cost nearly as much to spray them as the entire value of the apples, one thing I cannot stand on my farm is poor or neglected fruit; besides, the improved aspect of the trees themselves was worth the price). Now that their petals had fallen came the new fragrance, subtler but no less exquisite, of many flowers after May rain, of a spring brook running under pines, and near the house the pungent aroma of lilacs.

Then came the German irises, like soldiers on parade, around the pool, and the bright lemon lilies in the shady dooryard. Scarce had the irises begun to fall when the foxgloves began to blossom, and all suddenly one morning after a very warm night the sundial was surrounded by a stately conclave of slender queens dressed in white and lavender, while more queens marched down from the orchard to the pool, and yet more stood against the shrubbery beyond it, or half hid the bare newness of our grape arbour.

"I don't need to take digitalis internally for a heart stimulant!"

cried Stella. "Oh, the lovely things! Quick, vases of them below the Hiroshiges! Quick, your camera! Quick, come and look at them, come and see the bees swinging in their bells!"

"I suppose they are breakfast bells," said I.

"This is no time for bad puns," she answered, dragging me swiftly down through the orchard, and up again to the sundial.

Indeed, the June morning was beautiful, and the foxgloves ringing the white dial post above the fresh green of our lawn had an indescribable air of delicate stateliness in the sun. And they were murmurous with bees. Again and again that morning I looked up from my work and saw them there, in the focussed sunlight, saw my wife hovering over them, saw beyond them, through the rose arches, Mike and Joe at work on the farm, saw still farther away the procession of my pines, and then the far hills and the blue sky. Again, at quiet evening, when a white-throated sparrow and an oriole were competing in song, we watched the foxgloves turn to white ghosts glimmering in the dusk, we heard the bird songs die away, the shrill of night insects arise, and then the tinkle of our brook came into consciousness, as it ran ever riverward in the night.

"The spring melts into summer," said Stella, "as gently as the little brook runs toward the sea. I wish it would linger, though. Oh, John, couldn't we build a dam and hold back the spring? A little pool of spring forever in our garden?"

"We shall have to make that pool within our hearts," said I.

Chapter XXIV

SOME RURAL PROBLEMS

There are many mysteries of marriage, quite unantic.i.p.ated by the bachelor before he changes his state. Not the least of them is the new range of social relations and impulses which follow a happy union. I do not mean social relations with a capital S. About such I know little and care less. Presumably marriage may bring them, also, into the life of a man who chooses the wrong wife. In fact, Stella and I have seen more than one case of it in Bentford, where we dwell near enough to the fringes of Society to observe the parasitic aspirations of several ladies with more fortune than "position." Mrs. Eckstrom, we have discovered since her call, is such a one. We, of course, were of no use to her, and she had not troubled us since, though two gold fish did arrive that night, as I have told. We are grateful for Antony and Cleopatra.

No, what I mean by social relations and impulses are the opportunities for service and the impulses to jump in and help others, which matrimony discloses and breeds. Who can say why this is so? Who can say why the bachelor is generally negatively--if not actively--selfish, while the same man when he has achieved a good wife, opened a house of his own, begun to employ labour directly instead of through the medium of a club or bachelor apartment hotel, is suddenly aware of wrong conditions in the world about him and a new desire to help set them right? It cannot entirely be due to the woman, for very often her maiden life has been as barren of social service as his own. It is inherent in the state of matrimony, and to me it seems one of the glories of that state.

Those couples who have not felt it, I think, have been but sterilely mated, though they have reproduced their kind never so many times.

At any rate, it was not long after the Eckstrom invasion that Stella and I went to play golf, carrying a load of lettuce heads and cauliflowers to market on our way. As all Bert's cauliflowers are sold in bulk to a New York commission merchant, I found I had the local market pretty much to myself, and was getting 15 cents a head for my plants. Mike dearly loved cauliflowers, and babied ours as a flower gardener babies his hybrid tea roses. They were splendid heads, and were bringing me in a dollar a day or more. I had visions of greatly increasing my output another season, for I could easily supply the two hotels as well.

We left our farm wagon in the church horse-sheds and went down to the links. There was a crowd of caddies of all ages sitting on the benches reserved for them, and half a dozen came rushing toward us. I chose a large boy, because I am one of those idiots who carries around at least seven more clubs than he ever uses, and Stella picked a smaller boy because she liked his face. As golf is not an engrossing game when you are playing with your wife, and she's a beginner into the bargain (matrimony has its drawbacks, too!) we fell to talking with our caddies.

"You must be in the high school, eh?" said I to mine.

"I went last year," he replied, "but I ain't goin' no more. Goin'

to work."

"Work at your age? What are you going to do?" asked Stella.

"I dunno--somethin'," he answered.

"Why don't you keep on at school?" I said.

"Aw, what's the use?" said he. "They don't learn you nothin'--algebra and English and stuff like that."

"A little English wouldn't hurt you at all, young man," said Stella.

"You don't like to study, do you?"

The boy looked sheepish, but admitted that he didn't.

"What do you like to do?" I asked. "You don't like to caddy very well, because you don't keep your eye on the ball, and you've made the little fellow take out the pin on every hole so far."

The boy flushed at this, and went up to the next pin himself.

"I'd like to work in a garden," he said, as we were walking to the next tee.

"You want to be a gardener, eh?" said I. "Has anybody ever taught you how to start a hotbed?"

"No, sir."

"Ever run a wheel hoe?"

"No, sir."

"Would you know what date to plant early peas, and corn, and lima beans?"

"No, sir."

"Ever graft an apple tree?"

"No, sir."

"Well, you're not very well fitted to take a job as a gardener yet, are you?" said I.

He admitted that he wasn't.

"Would you keep on going to school if they taught you how to be a gardener?" asked Stella, carrying on the line of questioning.

"You bet," he replied. "But, gee! they don't teach nothin' like that. Only bookkeepin' and typewritin', and then you have to go away to a business college somewhere before you can get a job."

"We seem to have stumbled on a civic problem," I remarked to my wife as we teed up. "I don't believe an educational survey would do this town any harm."

"And the finger of destiny points to us?" she smiled.

"Probably," said I. "You'd hardly expect the Eckstroms to tackle the job!"

That night we began by consulting Bert. Bert is one of the best men I know, and he applies the latest methods to growing cauliflowers; but he's a New England farmer, none the less, and he has the true "rural mind."

"'Vocational education!'" he exclaimed. "We got more education than we kin afford now. Taxes are way up, an' the school appropriation's the biggest one we have--$19,000, to only $7,000 for the roads! And then you talk about more! We got along pretty well without it so far."

"Have you, though?" said Stella. "You've got a high school, but how many boys have you got in it?"