382 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



with insufficient capital and only a growing expe- 

 rience, which always seemed to arrive at the spot 

 just too late to be of use. Whether it was that I 

 had to think hard for thirty-five cents to sharpen 

 a ploughshare or to think hard for a hundred and 

 thirty-five dollars to settle indisputable claims for 

 indispensable service of horse or implement or man, 

 I had to think hard all the time. But the little 

 bunch of cattle was growing. Molly was at the time 

 mother of two steers and two heifers, and the 

 eldest steer was certainly worth the price I 

 paid for him and herself together forty-five 

 dollars. Blacky had also placed two steers to my 

 credit, and there was the other big steer who had 

 hailed from " the hard cow." Best of all, there 

 was always in view cheering me on to " the heights 

 of one's heart " Nancy with Felicity and Jupiter 

 in tow. 



That year too I had a lovely garden. Countess 

 Spencer sweet peas, the seed of which had hailed 

 from Covent Garden, and masses of Shirley poppy 

 brought a mass of lovely colour to the flower-beds 

 which I had dug in 1906, and when colour had 

 basely deserted at the earliest attacks of Jack Frost, 

 mignonette, and love-in-a-mist, which had lain 

 almost concealed among the poppies, lived on 

 fighting the frost-fiend with the last breath of 

 fragrance and kindness. None can tell how much a 

 garden contributes to the joy of life on the prairie. 

 The season of flowers is so short, and toil is so long 

 that the place of dolce far niente often smiled 

 with me over the old dream of sweet idleness, but it 

 never mocked, and the refreshment of the lovely 

 flash and fragrance of that flower-bed perhaps 



