Nettie watched him as he swung the scythe, and listened to the swish, swish, as the tall weeds fell; when the weeds around the well grew less she caught a glimpse of something blue, and then of something red; she pulled herself up to the window, and leaned out, and then she shrieked:—
“Father, don’t cut down the lilies!”
There they were, blue lilies and tiger lilies, growing together, close by the well!
“How did they get there, father?” she called.
“They must have been in the sod that I put around the well last fall,” he replied; “I remember now that I got it from two different places. If I had cut down the weeds before the lilies bloomed, I shouldn’t have known they were there, and should have cut them all down together.”
Nettie fell back in her chair with a sigh of delight, watching her father while with his hands he pulled all the weeds away from the lilies.
“Mother,” she called, lifting herself forward, and resting her chin again on the window-sill.
“Well, Deary,” came in a quick voice from the shed, and her mother appeared in the shed doorway with the dish of boiled potatoes she held in her hand when Nettie’s voice reached her.
“Mother, will you ask Judith to stop and see my lilies the next time she goes past?”
“Your lilies, child?”