The Tinder-Box

by Maria Thompson Daviess

Aunt Augusta insists that the only thing to do is to get up with the first crack of dawn and carefully search out each slug, remove it and destroy it. She says if this is done for a week they will be exterminated.

I carefully explained it all to Jasper and when I came down to breakfast he was coming in with three queer green things, also with an injured air of having been kept up all night. I didn't feel equal to making him go on with the combat and ignored the question for two days until I saw all the buds on my largest Neron done for in one night.

I have always been able to get up at the break of day to go sketching—it was at daybreak that I made my sketch in the Defleury gardens that captured the French art eye enough to get me my Salon mention. If I could get up to splash water-colors at that hour, I surely could rush to the protection of my own roses, so I went to bed with gray dawn on my mind and the shutters wide open so the first light would get full in my eyes.

I am glad that it was a good bright ray that woke me and partly dazzled me, for the sight I had, after I had been kneeling down in the rose bed for fifteen minutes, was something of a shock to me, though no reason in the world why it should have been. I can't remember that I ever speculated as to whether the Crag wore pajamas or not, and I don't see that I should have been surprised that he did instead of the night shirt of our common ancestry.

He came around the side of the house out of the sun-shot mist and was half way down the garden path before I saw him or he saw me, and I must say that his unconcern under the circumstances was rather remarkable.

He was attired in a light blue silk pajama jacket that was open at the throat and half way down his broad breast. He had on his usual gray trousers, but tag's of blue trailed out and ruffled around his bare ankles, and across his bare heels that pro truded from his slippers. His hair was in heavy tousled black curls all over his head and his gray eyes were positively mysterious with interrupted dreams. In one hand he carried a tin can and in the other a small pointed stick, which looked murderously fitted for the extermination of the marauders.

I was positively nervous over the prospect of his embarrassment when he should catch sight of me, but there was none.

"Eve!" he exclaimed, with surprise, and a ray of pure delight drove away the dreams in his eyes. Nobody in the wide world calls me Eve but just the Crag, and he does it in a queer, still way when he is surprised to see me, or glad, or sorry, or moved with any kind of sudden emotion.

And queer as it is I have to positively control the desire to answer him with the correlated title—Adam!

"I forgot to tell you yesterday that I was coming over to get the slugs for you, dear," he said as he came down the row of roses next to mine, squatted opposite to where I was kneeling by the bushy, suffering Neron and began to examine the under side of each leaf carefully. He was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in the early light with his great chest bare and the blue of the pajamas melting into the bronze of his throat and calling out the gray in his eyes. I had to force myself into being gardener rather than artist, as we laughed together over the glass bowl and silver spoon I had brought out for the undoing of the slugs. Some day I'm going to paint him like that!