COMMUTER'S WIFE 31 



Aunt Lot had never before cultivated anything 

 more than a city " dooryard," or controlled any 

 service but that of a broken-spirited maid of the 

 poor relation variety, consequently she was inco- 

 herent and unreasonable in her directions, expect- 

 ing him to sow and reap, so to speak, on the same 

 day. I became fully impressed with this by the 

 time I was six years old, and at this time father, 

 tired of settling differences, engaged a "gardener," 

 thinking it would be easier to hold a man respon- 

 sible than his elder half-sister, who always retreated 

 behind a sort of concrete breastwork composed of 

 reminiscences of his boyish shortcomings, relation- 

 ship, and tears. 



Father and Aunt Lot looked upon the gardener 

 from different points of view. Aunt Lot used him 

 alternately as a weapon or a patent of superiority to 

 be worn at village teas; father apologetically, as a 

 housewife accustomed to New England thrift would 

 refer to a housekeeper that she had been forced to 

 employ, through her own incompetence; while I 

 hated the gardener with the uncompromising honest 

 hatred of childhood, because, whether he was called 

 John, Pat, or Peter, he invariably regarded my efforts 

 as things of little account, trod on the shells that I 

 brought from the shore with infinite labour to edge 



