COMMUTER'S WIFE 237 



even the thought of being possessed might mar 

 their liberty. 



Evan found his primroses yesterday morning, one 

 tuft showing half a dozen blossoms. When I saw 

 his face as he called me to him, holding them in his 

 hand, I realized that after all it is the little things 

 of life that count, for the primrose was not only 

 precious in itself, but for all it stood for. 



I was thinking this morning as I watched 

 the bluebirds flitting about their knot-hole in the 

 apple tree, heard the meadow-larks down in 

 the pasture, the flicker laughing in the wood lot, the 

 robins in the spruces, and the jolly song-sparrow 

 almost by my elbow, that the important garden 

 birds are like the flowers in number. How few com- 

 paratively of the hundreds listed in the ornithologies 

 we can know well enough to call garden companions, 

 even if the residents of the wood lot and home woods 

 be counted in. 



Many come and go, travelling beyond us. We hear 

 a strange note and see a flutter of unusual feathers. 

 We may call them by name ; but like the flowers 

 unsuited to the garden, they are not of our world. 

 A list of twenty-five would cover the confidentially 

 intimate, of fifty the really tangible. 



Martha Corkle came to tell me mysteriously that 



