and later woke them to life with warm 

 hearted hen- marigolds; and music, 

 for she brought her violin and coaxed 

 Miss Adelaide to play a stiff accompani- 

 ment, coaxed her to play the old- 

 fashioned dances while she taught Robert 

 Davenant to dance. She brought her 

 saddle horse up from the South and made 

 Robert ride with her early in the morn- 

 ing. And the good folk of Meadowport 

 would see them pass, laughing like chil- 

 dren, and said again that they hoped she 

 would settle down before she ruined 

 Robert Davenant. Even Miss Adelaide 

 protested: "Dear child, the early morn- 

 ing is the time for duties, not for pleas- 

 ures." 



"But, Adelaide," said young Mrs. 

 Davenant, fixing her clear brown eyes 

 on her sister-in-law, "why did God make 

 the early morning so exquisite if it were 

 not that he wished to pull us out of our 

 houses? The rest of the day isn't so 

 pretty. You've no idea how wonderful 

 the light on the mountains was this 

 morning. If you w r ould only come with 

 us once!" 



But Miss Adelaide shook her head 

 with a reluctant smile, and hoped, like 

 Meadowport, that Margaret would 

 "settle down." Major Pomerane, the 

 next neighbor liked her and when she 

 sent a plate of hot Sally Lunn responded 

 with a jar of mince meat of his own 

 making — wickedly stiff with brandy, but 

 very delicious. Serenely unconscious of 

 the general disapproval, young Mrs. 

 Davenant invited the frowning Meadow- 

 port folk to dine and sup. She invited 

 with a Southern readiness and ease and 

 frequency that Meadowport, (used only 

 to invite on rare occasions and then after 

 careful consideration and much prepara- 

 tion), was astonished, and disapproving — 

 but came. An invitation was a serious 

 thing not to be given lightly, but soberly, 

 advisedly and in the fear of God. But 

 young Mrs. Davenant invited to break- 

 fast, merely because the roses were in 

 bloom; and would have supper served 

 on a garden table under the great elm 

 trees. 



"But my dear," remonstrated Miss 

 Adelaide, "it has never been done!" 



"How dreadfully unappreciative they 

 must think us! " said young Mrs. Daven- 

 ant. 



"Unappreciative, my dear?" 



"The elms," explained young Mrs. 

 Davenant. "They have been casting 

 those exquisite shadows for a hundred 

 years, and to think that no one cared 

 enough to bring a supper out to have it 

 in company with them! Don't you 

 think it time, dear Adelaide?" Then 

 she would put a soft young arm around 

 the older woman's neck, put her cheek 

 against hers like a child. "Please ! You 

 won't dislike it. Truly you won't!" 



And Miss Adelaide, who petted her 



almost as much as did Robert Davenant, 

 would smile reluctantly. "Whatever 

 pleases you, dear child." 



And so neighbors and friends would 

 breakfast with the roses and have supper 

 under the great elms; they came with 

 alacrity and passed the time happily 

 enough, but with a certain guilty enjoy- 

 ment. It should not have been so 

 pleasant to do what "was not done." 

 And after they went home they said 

 that "Mrs. Robert Davenant was 'differ- 

 ent,'" and that you "never could tell," 

 and that they hoped for Robert's sake 

 and his sisters that she would "settle 

 down," that it wasn't quite right. 



Poor child! She did settle down. 

 For after two luminous years which made 

 the first part of his life seem blank and 

 lifeless and the last ashes, she was laid 

 in the little churchyard beside the 

 decorous Davenants, and Robert was 

 left suddenly aged and broken, more 

 silent than ever, with a coppery haired 

 baby in his arms. 



But he brought the flowers into the 

 house as she had taught him, the red 

 roses and the marigolds and the tall 

 larkspurs, and he took his baby into the 

 garden where she played with the poppies 

 and hollyhock blossoms and laughed and 

 cooed at their warmth and color. Then 

 he, too, "settled down" to the church- 

 yard and the little Roberta was left 

 to her three aunts, as out of place in the 

 dim, stately old house as a humming bird 

 in a family of owls. 



Chapter III 



At eighteen Roberta was still con- 

 sidered by Meadowport as an experi- 

 ment. 



The Davenant ladies did their best. 

 Miss Adelaide taught her the piano, 

 for Miss Augusta she dutifully embroid- 

 ered, but the embroider} 7 would get 

 taken out to the garden and lost and 

 forgotten. Also she went dutifully to 

 school. But always in the morning, if 

 she w T ere not miles away up the hill to 

 hear the thrushes, you could have found 

 her in the garden. 



She made friends with Major Pome- 

 rane, an elderly bachelor who was eyed 

 askance in Meadowport, for he never 

 went to church and he had fast horses 

 and won prizes with them at the Coun- 

 ty' Fair. From the time Roberta was 

 ten he would let her ride anything he had, 

 and if she was not afield on her own 

 account she might be found over at the 

 Major's watching his darkey groom the 

 horses, and taking a hand at it herself, 

 if it was the chestnut colt. If not there, 

 she would be sure to be in the garden, 

 poking with trowel and slim brown 

 fingers among the plants. 



She made friends with Rudolph Trom- 

 mel, of the famous Roseberry Gardens, 

 who used to stop and chat over the 

 121 



garden fence on his way to work, and 

 look critically at the plants. 



"Uncle Rudolph," she said to him one 

 morning, just after her eighteenth birth- 

 day, "why couldn't I be a gardener?" 



"I consider you a fery good gardener," 

 replied the old man ponderously. ' ' Those 

 larkspurs are the best in town." 



"I don't mean just this," she said 

 looking quickly around the old garden, 

 "I mean to know really about all the 

 plants and the wonderful new ones, and 

 how they are grown. Do you know that 

 great magnolia at the old King place, 

 which was once a botanic garden?" 



Old Rudolph nodded. 



"There was a staging round it once 

 high up and lots of little magnolia 

 plants in pots, and they bent down young 

 branches of the old tree and grafted 

 them, one to each little plant. That 

 was an old way. I want to know how 

 it's done now. I want to do it with 

 those!" she concluded, holding up earth 

 stained brown hands and spreading out 

 slim capable fingers. "Is there any 

 reason why I couldn't?" 



"Only that you are not a man," said 

 Rudolph Trommel. 



Roberta sniffed. "What has that to 

 do with it!" she said hotly. 



"Chust this. So far as I haf ob- 

 serfed, among plants, there is of course 

 a slight structural differentiation in the 

 sexes. I haf yet to obserfe a marked 

 difference in energy 7 or in strength or in 

 usefulness; und, in any difference in en- 

 ergy the balance would be in fafor of the 

 female. In human kind there iss this diffi- 

 culty. Suppose a horticulturist iss making 

 experiments. Und then suppose there iss 

 a baby with the colic. If the experi- 

 menter iss a woman und if it iss her baby 

 — alas for the experiment ! If the experi- 

 menter iss a man und if it iss his baby, he 

 iss sorry it has the colic: that iss his wife's 

 affair. He goes on with the experiment. 

 If the woman iss not married und has no 

 baby to haf the colic — then it is relatif, 

 aunt, friend, brother that calls for her 

 when in need of aid. Und — she drops the 

 experiment. The man is sorry, he sends 

 his sympathy (by his wife), he does not 

 drop his experiment. No one expects him 

 to. 



"It is not a difference of intelligence, 

 of energy-, of ability, but of concentra- 

 tion. It may be confention, it may be 

 instinct — the woman feels the social, 

 human claim binding in a way that the 

 man does not. That iss the difficulty. 

 It may be ofercome by concentration 

 und by uncultifating the natural und 

 expected-by-society female altruism." 



"Um-m," said Roberta contempla- 

 tively, then she changed the subject. 

 "How did you learn, Uncle Rudolph? " 



"I? When I wass a lad at Zurich, I 

 learnt there what there wass to know 

 about plants; when I had what could 



