"Dave's a miser. He always was and he always will be," snapped Lizzie. "I despise the whole kit and biling of them, money or no money. Dave never earned an honest cent in his life."
"Lots of rich men haven't," replied Amos.
Amos' garden was a thing of beauty. Its trim rows of vegetables were bordered with sunflowers, whose yellow heads vied in height with the rustling ears of corn. Amos had a general grudge toward life. He had a vague, unexpressed belief that because he was a descendant of the founders of the country, the world owed him an easy living. He had a general sense of superiority to his foreign born neighbors and to the workmen in the plow factory.
But in his garden, all his grudges disappeared. Every evening until dark and every Sunday he worked away, whistling softly to himself. He always felt nearer to his wife, in the garden. She too had been bred on a New England farm. He always felt as if the fine orderliness of the rows was for her.
Lydia greatly preferred weeding the garden to cleaning the house. Indeed the contrast between the fine garden, the well kept patch of lawn and the disorderly house was startling. Amos grumbled and complained but Lydia was in the hobble-de-hoy stage—she didn't care and she had no one teach her.
One afternoon in August, clad in her bathing suit, now much too small for her, she was working in the garden, when a voice behind her grunted,
"Eat!"
Lydia jumped and turned. The old squaw of two years before stood begging. She was as pitifully thin as ever. As she stared at the ugly old Indian, Lydia's throat tightened. She seemed to feel baby Patience's fingers clinging to hers in fear.
"Want some vegetables?" she asked, motioning toward the garden.
The squaw nodded eagerly and held up the dirty apron she was wearing.
Lydia began slowly to fill it, talking as she worked.