8 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



eyes fixed on the sky, proclaimed with many turns and 

 changes the exact spot where he did not intend to 

 locate his nest. This is an early spring, of a truth. 



Presently pale sunbeams thread the mist, gathering 

 colour as they filter through the pollen-meshed catkins 

 of the black birches ; an oriole bugling in the Yulan 

 magnolias below at the road-bend, fire amid snow; a 

 high-hole laughing his courtship in the old orchard. 



Then Lavinia Cortright coming up to exchange 

 Dahlia bulbs and discuss annuals and aster bugs. She 

 and Martin browse about the country, visiting from 

 door to door like veritable natives, while their garden, 

 at first so prim and genteel, like one of Lavinia's own 

 frocks, has broken bounds and taken on brocade, 

 embroidery, and all sorts of lace frills, overflowed the 

 south meadow, and only pauses at the stile in the wall 

 of our old crab-apple orchard, rivalling in beauty and 

 refined attraction any garden at the Bluffs. Martin's 

 purse is fuller than of yore, owing to the rise in Whirl- 

 pool real estate, and nothing is too good for Lavinia's 

 garden. Even more, he has of late let the dust rest 

 peacefully on human genealogy and is collecting quaint 

 garden books and herbals, flower catalogues and lists, 

 with the solemn intent of writing a book on Historic 

 Flowers. At least so he declares ; but when Lavinia is 



