"'A man there was, though some did count him mad,
The more he cast away, the more he had.'"
"True," said Miss Isabel. "So you have a garden, Philip. I must come and see it some day."
Phil paid for his seeds, and after buying his granny's medicine, he went on his way home. Perhaps you think the tempter let him alone after being defeated. Not at all. All the way home, he kept whispering, "How silly you were! You might just as well have bought the plants as not. Nobody would have known it." And Phil was just silly enough to listen to him, and let himself be put out of humor.
The daisies with which Mr. Regan filled his basket were just as pretty as they had been before, but somehow they looked like mean little weeds compared to the plants he had seen at Ryan's. He almost thought he would not set them out at all. He looked at the plants in the green-house and stopped to watch Mr. Anderson's gardener planting the odd-shaped flower beds in the lawn, and thought how small and rough his own little garden looked by the side of this grand place; why the very bed the gardener was filling with red geraniums was larger than his whole garden. What was the use of poor people trying to do anything?
It was in a very bad humor that Phil arrived at home, and found granny sitting on the bench in the sunshine. She exclaimed over the daisies; they were just such as used to grow in the old country, she said, and the sight of them warmed her very heart.
"'Twas very kind, entirely, to give them to you," said she.
"No such great kindness," answered Phil, rather shortly; "he was going to throw them away if I hadn't taken them. But I suppose they are good enough for poor folks."
"It's likely they are, seeing who made them," answered the old woman, quietly. "Who did you see down town?"
"Nobody but Miss Isabel. Has any one been here?"
"Yes, Horace Maberly. His mother wants Mary to go up and help the cook Saturday. It's a grand dinner they are to have."