But the garden will never be out of fashion! Looking forth again from the window, I can see our best discovery of last season beginning to scatter its bits of sky on the ground, as it does every day before noon. It is flax, which blooms every day at sunrise the season through, sheds all its petals when the sun is high, and renews them all with the next day’s dew. It is perfectly hardy and reproduces itself in great quantity. No blue is quite like it save the sky, and at seven o’clock of a fresh June morning you will go many a mile before you find anything so lovely as our garden borders. A little later, too, the first sowing of our schyzanthus will begin to flower, against a backing of white platycodons, and that will be an old-fashioned feature of delicate bloom perpetually new, for the little butterfly flower, as it used to be called, covering the entire graceful plant with orchidlike blossoms, is one of those shyer effects that the professional gardeners never strive for, but which we amateurs who are poor enough to be our own gardeners achieve, to put the great expensive formal gardens to shame. Another bed we are proud of is filled with love-in-a-mist rising out of sweet alyssum–all feathery blue and white, like our own skies. But we, too, have the showier effects. Already the best of them is coming–about a hundred feet of larkspur along the west wall of the garden, and at its base pink Canterbury bells. Unfortunately, the bells will be passing as the larkspur comes to its fullest flower, but for about four or five days in ordinary seasons that particular border of pink and blue is a rare delight.
I wonder, by the way, if Stella has watered the schyzanthus plants this morning. They are down in the borders by the pool. Perhaps I had better go and see. A moment’s respite from my toil will do me good. I will listen to the tinkle of the brook, as I will follow the path that wanders beside it through the maples to the pines, where our garden is but the reproduction in little of our fair New England woods. At the spot where first we heard the hermit sing I shall find my wife and child, I shall find them for whom all my strivings are, who give meaning to my life, who, when all is said, are the sunshine of its serene hours. What a blue sky overhead where the cloud ships ride! What a burst of song from the oriole! What a pleasant sound from the field beyond the roses–the soft chip of Mike’s hoe between the onions! And hark, from the pines a tiny cry! Can he want his father?
THE END
STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list
LADDIE. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.
This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie, the older brother whom Little Sister adores, and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery. There is a wedding midway in the book and a double wedding at the close.
THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs.