92 Old Time Gardens 



other days walk beside me, though unseen and 

 unheard. 



About thirty years ago a bright young Yankee 

 girl went to the island of Cuba as a governess to 

 the family of a sugar planter. It was regarded as a 

 somewhat perilous adventure by her home-staying 

 folk, and their apprehensions of ill were realized in 

 her death there five years later. This was not, how- 

 ever, all that happened to her. The planter's wife 

 had died in this interval of time, and she had been 

 married to the widower. A daughter had been born, 

 who, after her mother's death, was reared in the 

 Southern island, in Cuban ways, having scant and 

 formal communication with her New England kin. 

 When this girl was twenty years old, she came to 

 the little Massachusetts town where her mother had 

 been reared, and met there a group of widowed and 

 maiden aunts, and great-aunts. After sitting for a 

 time in her mother's room in the old home, the 

 reserve which often exists between those of the same 

 race who should be friends but whose lives have been 

 widely apart, and who can never have more than 

 a passing sight of each other, made them in semi- 

 embarrassment and lack of resources of mutual 

 interest walk out into the garden. As they passed 

 down the path between high lines of Box, the girl 

 suddenly stopped, looked in terror at the gate, and 

 screamed out in fright, " The dog, the dog, save me, 

 he will kill me ! " No dog was there, but on that 

 very spot, between those Box hedges, thirty years 

 before, her mother had been attacked and bitten by 

 an enraged dog, to the distress and apprehension of 



