“Perhaps your father did not intend to keep the place,” suggested Norma. “It looks—well, finished.”
“I’m sure he is coming down another summer,” said Anne quickly. “It is only this year he had to go away on business, he said. It is the fault of the caretakers that the place looks so badly.”
“Why, here is one leetle garden growing nicely as can be!” cried Gilda, who had been exploring by herself. “See, ze roses are all in ze bud!”
“It is my own little garden!” cried Anne, running to where Gilda stood. “I was afraid to visit it, for fear it would be dead. I have taken care of it all myself for ever so many summers, ever since I was a tiny tot. I never let anyone else weed it. And here is my herb garden behind it; but that does not look so well.”
“I didn’t know you ever worked, Anne,” said Nancy innocently, “even in a garden.”
“Work in a garden is only play,” said Anne.
“We will remember that!” chorused the Round Robin. “Our vegetable garden never gets half enough attention,” explained Nancy. “We’ll introduce you to-morrow!” But Anne was bending over the little plot she called her garden, fingering the plants lovingly. Rosebushes, mignonette, poppies, morning glories, sweet william, iris were all in bud, nicely weeded and trimmed. It was like a little oasis in a desert of desolation.
“I don’t understand why this looks so well, when everything else is neglected,” said Anne, greatly puzzled. “It certainly seems as if somebody had been tending it. Whoever it is, I wish he had looked after my pets too. I’m afraid the poor things are all dead!”
“Maybe zey went away to be wild rabbits again,” suggested Gilda sympathetically. “Zere are wild rabbits here. I saw one yesterday.”
“Oh, did you? What was he like?” Anne was all eagerness. But it was a little brown bunny which Gilda had spied in the woods; not the big white Plon.