Margarita Spalding Gerry

“ Eliot with his gentle nut-cracker smile.
"In plants, madam, precocity is a disease."
"Plants don't have to earn their living," snapped the capable lady.
Tennant passed his hand over his forehead; he never could understand his neighbors. He smiled guiltily as he thought of some of his methods with Jeremy. What, he wondered, would Mrs. Eliot think if she could see, from her closed evening shutters, a small faun capering about on the cool wet grass, the spray from a garden hose playing deliciously upon its glistening white skin? ”

“ There it was—a white rose no longer. Jeremy saw a tall stalk, dead and dry and bearing a cluster of yellowed petals. In place of the perfume it gave out a dusty smell.
"You did it. I took you in. You brought the sickness with you; the doctor said so. That's why I forgot her, and she's dead!"
Jeremy stood quiet—so quiet that that of itself forced itself on Dave's despair. Tennant checked himself. The child was watching him with the same look of dumb terror in his eyes as had been there when he fled from the Silence that had been his mother.
The old man tried to control himself. ”

“ For a man sixty-odd who can hardly take care of himself, and who never had anything more to do with a child before than to give him the flowers his mother sent him for—"
He left the sentence unfinished and sat for a time in troubled silence. The peace of the night had begun to rest him when he started up.
"If I haven't forgotten the greenhouse!" he groaned. "The boy drove everything else out of my head!"
"A child can do more unexpected things than a hybrid plant," said Dave, with rueful emphasis.
It was a week since Jeremy had come to the greenhouse. ”

“ It does seem as if the earth ought to know how to nourish a growing thing better than has been done for that child."
The dinner was a feast to Jeremy. Dave had filled a big bowl in the middle of the table with roses. There was so little sale for them at this time of the year with the frugal Deering folks that he could indulge himself with a clear conscience. The tints of the flowers were reflected dully in the satiny lustre of the mahogany table that had been willed to him by his grandfather. Tennant put before his guest the simplest things of his simple larder. ”

“ No one has ever given—that to Dave Tennant—since his mother tucked him into bed—the last time."
As Dave and Jeremy worked happily, taking up the white rose bush, Dave's tongue ran garrulously on—it seemed that he could not stop talking.
"And, Jeremy," he babbled, "you'll have such a greenhouse as there isn't in this State. But first we'll have the truck patch turned into a rose garden. You'll have a wing built on just for the white roses—for we'll ask Jepsom to let us make cuttings, And people will come from all over the State. You'll have an experimental greenhouse. ”

“ The flowers won't do their best unless you love them. I won't starve this one—even if the other is gone."
He took the boy into his arms. The little, warm, clinging body, which he had meant to comfort, comforted him. He forced his stiffened face to smile. The smile was so instantly reflected back by the little watching face that it seemed to have originated with Jeremy, not Dave. "We'll manage," said Dave, turning his back on the rose bush and its dead hopes. "There's work in Dave yet, years of work. ”

“ My mother used to be afraid, too, of having me get my clothes dirty. I believe children have to have dirt to grow in just as much as plants." And he looked at Jeremy with new sympathy.
Jeremy had six of his ten flower pots filled with fascinating black earth, and each artistically smoothed down, when a tall, thin woman slammed the gate. She was dressed in black of a painful neatness. Her gloomy face was set in lines of unwilling obligation. When Jeremy saw her he got up from the ground, tried anxiously to wipe some of the dirt from his hands, and retreated toward Dave. ”

“ Dave felt flattered that he could guess what a child wanted.
"Must be different from other children," he thought, while he was putting Jeremy's flowers in water. "More like the flowers. They know what they want—and want the right things." He brought out some small flower-pots. Then he took Jeremy outside to show him two piles of earth.
"You take some of this kind and some of that and put them together." Then he showed the boy how to sift the earth to make it fine enough. Jeremy's eyes were fixed on his instructor. At last Tennant got out a drawer full of seed envelopes. ”

“ Makes you think about the man that the ravens fed in the wilderness, or falling manna— Come to think of it, ravens are more in order. Old Jepsom isn't unlike one—in features. Must be pretty decent inside. Who would ever have thought he cared anything about flowers?"
Tennant rose slowly to the full height of his spare figure and tossed back white locks with a gallant motion of his head. He looked down the village street again.
"It never seems to grow old to me," he murmured.—Much solitude had given Dave the habit of thinking aloud. ”

“ He is growing stronger already. And as for a trade," he smiled slightly, "perhaps I can teach him one."
"To grow flowers?" demanded Mrs. Eliot, sceptically. Something in the glance of her keen eyes convinced Dave that she saw clear through his pocket to his old leather wallet, and knew that he had begun to draw on the little surplus he had brought from Danforth. He dropped the subject and steadied himself against the door.
"I don't think Jeremy wants to go to school—"
"Nonsense! Boys never want to go to school. If you don't start them early, they'll be at a disadvantage later on." ”

“ The woman smiled grimly. "Are you talking about my sister? You may be sure she didn't teach him anything like this—or let him litter things up with plants. A widow has too much to do to clean up after a child all the time. Come, Jeremy. I will have to get you ready to-day; there won't be time after the funeral to-morrow. We will have to start right after it is over. I've got my week's cleaning at home to do yet."
Jeremy started to her. He had been trained to obey. But the sight of his pots and seeds and of Dave's battalions of flowers made him stop.
Tennant felt gloomy. ”

“ Wasn't it just like me to leave Danforth, where I was laying up money, and come here, just because the people knew how to raise flowers—and didn't need me?" He stood still and looked.
Nasturtiums overflowed all bound of window-box or sweet-alyssum bordered walks; they nodded bright heads from the tops of stone walls and peeped around trellises. ”

“ The eagerness with which an extraordinarily red phlox and an equally vivid hollyhock were seized brought the uncomfortable feeling again to Dave's throat. A recollection of the austere-looking mother came into his mind.
"I wonder if she ever let him have anything bright?" he muttered. "Now, Jeremy," he said, "take your pots and seeds out-of-doors. Right into the sunshine. Child has not had sunlight enough. Plants need all they can get of it—children can't be very different ”

“ It was just at that moment that something prompted Jeremy to squeeze Dave's fingers!
Dave dropped the handle of his cultivator and drew the Bugle out of his pocket. He made his way cautiously between his rows of early potatoes and out to where a fallen log" promised a comfortable seat. He had turned his poppy field into a truck patch.
He unfolded the sheet and turned to the place he was looking for.
" 'Jepsom's Thousand Going Begging!' " he read. "Adams County Florists Can't Master Hybridization! No One To Claim Prize! ”

“ Once you get her fixed, when you look for pink you find it, and when you expect red, there it is. But a boy—"
He went back into the tool house to get his shears.
"Got to start those cuttings to-day, no matter how queer I feel," he said. "Wonder what makes me so tired and gives me such a headache? ”