208 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



casting her eyes through the doors of dining room, living 

 room, and den, she fixed them on me with rather a mis- 

 chievous twinkle, as she said, "You shall gather and 

 arrange the flowers for the house ; and always have plenty 

 of them, but never a withered or dropsical blossom 

 among them all. You shall also invent new ways for 

 arranging them, new combinations, new effects, the only 

 restriction being that you shall not put vases where the 

 water will drip on books, or make the house look 

 like the show window of a wholesale florist. I will give 

 you a fresh mop, and you can have the back porch and 

 table for your workshop, and if I'm not mistaken, you 

 will find two hours a day little enough for the work!" 

 she added with very much the air of some one engag- 

 ing a new housemaid and presenting her with a 

 broom ! 



It has never taken me two hours to gather and ar- 

 range the flowers, and though of course we are only 

 beginning to have much of a garden, we've always had 

 flowers in the house, quantities of sweet peas and such 

 things, besides wild flowers. I began to protest, an injured 

 feeling rising in my throat, that she, Maria Maxwell, 

 music teacher, city bound for ten years, should think to 

 instruct me of recent outdoor experience. 



"Yes, you've always had flowers, but did you pick 



