Sophy, in her sun-bonnet, bent over her task, and for an hour they worked absorbedly. Suddenly she looked up, to find herself alone. But there were voices in the other yard. He was working for Eliza. But Eliza was not helping him. She walked back and forth—Sophy could see her passing the cracks in the high board-fence—and once she called to Jim in a nervous voice, "I wisht you'd go away."
Jim apparently did not hear. He went on freeing the peonies.
"No wonder things git pindlin' under this old locust-tree," Sophy heard him grumble. "Throwin' down leaves an' branches every day in the year. Half on 't's rotten. It ought to come down."
"Well," said Eliza, "if it ought to come down, let it come. You know where to find the axe."
Sophy, on the other side of the fence, could hardly bear the horror and surprise of it. She forgot she was "not speaking" to her sister.
"O 'Liza!" she cried piercingly. "That was mother's tree. She set it out with her own hands. I dunno what she'd say."
There was a moment's quiet, and then Eliza's voice came gruffly:—
"You let the tree alone."
But Jim had no thought of touching it. He was working silently at his task. Sophy went into the house, trembling. She had spoken first. But it was to save the tree.
The warm spring days went on, and Annie Darling had not come. Weeds began to devastate her garden, and Wilfred used to look over the fence and wish uncle Jim would do something. Once he spoke to uncle Jim about it, in the way everybody had of making him responsible for the floral well-being of the neighborhood; but Gardener Jim would hardly listen.