[FLOWER BORDERS.]
BY EMMA J. GRAY.
"I tell you, Cousin Bess, there is everything in the way garden-beds are arranged. There is that old couple who live next door, so old they have to just hobble out to their flowers, and what do you suppose they've done?"
"I have no idea, but if I may judge from your tone, something very queer," and Cousin Bess laughed lightly, while she laid the book she had been reading on the table, and then looked up at Charlie.
"Well, around each bed they've put white stones, just about the size of this," and the boy picked up an ostrich egg, "and so close that one stone touches the other."
"Have you never seen that before?"
"Never, Cousin Bess; but it makes their yard look fine; and as for ours—well, the contrast is simply awful. I've come to you for points. Our ramshackle fence and half-rotten flower-bed boards are too much. I am ashamed, and simply will not let those two old people outstrip me. I'm bound to go right ahead and even up with them if I can."
And Cousin Bess looked into the boy's eager face before she replied: "That's a good resolution. I am glad to hear you say so." And then followed the words:
"'Go make thy garden fair as thou canst;
Thou workest never alone;
Perchance he whose plot is next to thine
Will see it, and mend his own.'