"There is but one way, Harriet, which I now think of to prevent it. I have heard Mr. Graham say that he had more leisure than he liked, and that he could very well attend to another garden besides his own and your Uncle Mackay's. Now, if we could get more work and more wages for him, he could, perhaps, hire a house for the present, and might in time again lay up money enough to buy."
"That's it, Aunt Kitty—that's it—that is the very best plan," said Harriet, eagerly; "do let me run over and tell Jessie about it."
"Wait, Harriet, till we see some prospect of succeeding in it, before we say any thing to Jessie. After breakfast we will go over to your uncle's, and see if we can learn any thing from him likely to profit Mr. Graham."
Before I had left the breakfast table, Harriet called out, "Aunt Kitty, here are Uncle Mackay and Mr. Graham coming this way." When they reached my gate, however, Mr. Graham passed on towards his own house, and my brother came in alone. He had just heard from Mr. Graham, that he would probably be obliged to leave us soon, and seemed much grieved about it. Mr. Graham had told him that his father had leased his house and garden from Mr. Butler for twenty-one years—that is, had engaged for that time to pay a certain sum of money every year for them. When the twenty-one years were out, Mr. Graham had offered to buy them, on condition that he should not be asked to pay the money for ten years. During this time, he had every year put by something towards paying this debt in a savings bank, and now, when the ten years wanted but a very few months of being ended, and he thought himself quite ready to pay for his house, he discovered that the bank had failed, or, as Harriet said, broken—that is, that it had nothing with which to pay him and others whom it owed.
My brother thought my plan for helping Mr. Graham would be a very good one, if we could only find the work and the wages; but this he feared would not be easy, as there were few persons in the neighborhood who employed a gardener.
"There is my friend Dickinson," he said at length, "who told me, when I saw him last, that he intended to dismiss his gardener, because he could not keep his children out of the garden, where they were forever annoying him by trampling on his flower-beds and breaking his flowers. This would be an excellent place, for he gives his gardener a very pretty house and some ground for himself, besides a high salary, but—"
"Oh!" said I, interrupting him, "do not put in a but, for that is the very place we want."
"Yes, Aunt Kitty," said Harriet, eagerly, "that is the very place."
"I fear," said my brother, smiling at her earnestness, "that it is a place which even Aunt Kitty with all her influence cannot get, for Mr. Dickinson declared he was determined never again to employ a man who had children, and you know his determination is not easily changed."
Still, discouraging as the case seemed, I resolved to try, and ordering the carriage, I asked Harriet if she would like to go with me. "No, thank you, Aunt Kitty. I would like the drive, but Mr. Dickinson looks so cross I am always afraid he is going to scold me."