Old Michael Martin, bent and weatherbeaten, the hero of the tale she had heard on her first visit, was at work spading the far end of the garden. He seemed a silent, crabbed person, who did not like to answer even when spoken to, so that Betsey found him rather disappointing. He would stop his work now and then, however, to hurl a few words of rather bewildering advice at the two among the bean rows.
“If you are to plant lettuce again, Miss Miranda,” he remarked suddenly, standing with both hands resting on his spade, “you had best be doing it to-day. It is the very last of the light of the moon.”
“What does he mean?” inquired Elizabeth in an undertone when he had gone on with his work again. She had no notion that moonlight need be considered in the matter of growing vegetables.
“He thinks that everything in a garden goes by signs and wonders,” Miss Miranda answered. “He says charms for luck when he puts in the cabbage plants, and he thinks that if the first peas are not sown on Saint Patrick’s Day, they will none of them come up at all. It is high time to set out the onions to-day, but he would be so disturbed at putting them in before the dark of the moon that I have not the heart to insist on it. All crops that grow under ground, he claims, must be planted in the dark of the moon, and those that ripen above, some time between its waxing and waning. So to-day is the day for lettuce and next week he will plant potatoes and beets and carrots and after I have tended them like babies all summer he will nod wisely when they grow big and say, ‘Oh, yes, of course they can’t help flourishing if you plant the right things in the dark and the light of the moon.’ But it does happen to be a good day for the lettuce. I am afraid that I have left the seeds on the kitchen table.”
Elizabeth volunteered to get them, and went up the path from the garden, past the big pen where the ducks and chickens were, and where a dozen brown-yellow ducklings were waddling solemnly forth on their first expedition into the outside world. She stopped to drive them back and then went on, across the lawn, to the open door of the cottage.
When she first came up the lane that day, she had noticed that the same big white horse that she had seen in the poplar-bordered cart track was now plowing in the field opposite the Reynolds’ cottage. It was guided by the same red-haired boy, who went plodding up and down the rows, leaving behind them a straight, blue-black ribbon of upturned soil. She stopped to watch for a moment as they came near the fence and she thought that he looked up and saw her, for she caught sight of a pair of very blue eyes and a fair, much-freckled face.
As she paused, however, there arose suddenly in the workshop wing of the cottage, such a wild crashing, such a commotion of whirring wheels and creaking machinery that she flew to the door to see what had happened. The crow’s voice mingled with the din, upraised in caws of loud excitement, while finally, during a faint lull, Mr. Reynolds was also to be heard, calling in the familiar tone of worried helplessness—
“Miranda, oh, Miranda.”
At first she could not make out what was happening, so full did the place seem to be of flapping black wings, whirling wheels and spinning pulleys. At last, however, she managed to understand that one of the big machines at the end of the shop was in violent motion and that a broken rod was flying round and round with the spinning wheel, smashing and crashing against everything that came in its way. Even in the midst of the noise Mr. Reynolds must have heard Elizabeth come in, for he glanced at her quickly over his shoulder.
“Climb up on that stool and throw the switch there above the workbench,” he directed. “That is the only way to stop this thing and I can’t leave the broken crank-shaft.”