The Family
the white wall, and in the middle two symmetrical,
round-topped linden-trees. Masses of green-brier
grew in the corners, the prickly stems interwoven
and clipped until they were like great bushes.
There was a bed for salad herbs. Salmon-pink
geraniums dripped over the wall. The French
marigolds and dahlias were just now at their best
—such dahlias as no one else in Hamilton could
grow. St. Peter had tended this bit of ground
for over twenty years, and had got the upper hand
of it. In the spring, when home-sickness for
other lands and the fret of things unaccomplished
awoke, he worked off his discontent here. In the
long hot summers, when he could not go abroad,
he stayed at home with his garden, sending his wife and daughters to Colorado to escape the humid
prairie heat, so nourishing to wheat and corn, so
exhausting to human beings. In those months when
he was a bachelor again, he brought down his books
and papers and worked in a deck chair under the
linden-trees; breakfasted and lunched and had his
tea in the garden. And it was there he and Tom
Outland used to sit and talk half through the warm, soft nights.
On this September morning, however, St. Peter knew that he could not evade the unpleasant effects of change by tarrying among his autumn flowers. He must plunge in like a man, and get used to the feeling that under his work-room there was a dead,
—15—
