348 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



July, 1913 



plants and they ain't any effect at all, 

 'ceptin' the one on you of disappointment. 

 Just you try an' see if you can keep the 

 weeds out, an' keep the bugs off, an' remem- 

 ber that handsome is as handsome does!" 



Chapter XII 



The middle of June Mrs. Tarbox left 

 us. She said I was now up and 'round; 

 that her housecleaning had been let go so 

 long that if "'twan't done" next week she 

 didn't know what she would do. 



Alonzo had come to fetch her. They 

 had just driven down the hill, leaving 

 Clarky and me sitting on our doorstep in 

 the dusk of the Sunday evening, consider- 

 ing the situation. 



Clarky spoke of one and another whom 

 Mrs. Tarbox had said "might help us out." 



"They's' Mis' Rayford," Mrs. Tarbox 

 had said, "but you'll have to fetch her an' 

 take her home. An' they's Josie Pratt 

 to the foot of the hill; she might come an' 

 wash up for you." 



The thrushes were singing adorably, 

 just as they always did at dusk — fluting 

 out arpeggios that went dizzily, divinely, 

 high. It seemed wicked to be considering 

 to such an ecstatic accompaniment the 

 question of whether or not Josie Pratt 

 would wash our dishes, or whether she 

 wouldn't — as bad as Mrs. Tarbox's dish 

 towels on the lilac bush. 



"Anything we imported," said Clarky, 

 surveying our wide dooryard that reached 

 acres and acres across to the fringing pines, 

 "wouldn't stay — too lonesome." 



There was a long silence, broken only 

 by the sound of the church-bells that 

 reached us faintly from the little church 

 across the river. 



"Clarky," I said at last, "every wild 

 creature over in those woods has wit 

 enough to get food for itself without being 

 served by another. That thrush has 

 found his breakfast and luncheon and dinner 

 and yet has leisure for his wonderful 

 music. Why cannot you and I be clever 

 enough to devise some form of rations 

 that will give us enough to eat and not con- 

 sume our whole time, in this lovely June 

 weather, in its cooking and preparation." 



Clarky turned and looked at me atten- 

 tively for a moment, but she said nothing. 

 She continued watching a chipmunk that 

 sat on our new stone wall (searching for 

 fleas I regret to say). 



"The loveliest thing we have up here," 

 I continued, "is our solitude. Why must 

 we spoil it? Why glue our lives to a three- 

 meal-a-day orbit with the kitchen stove 

 as its governing sun? Why drape our 

 lilac bushes with dish towels? The life 

 is more than meat and the body than 

 raiment. We've simplified the raiment, 

 why can't we arrange the matter of meat ? " 



"Listen," I proceeded, "you can see to 

 it that we have a properly balanced ration 

 ■ — carbohydrates, proteins, and all that — 

 Heaven knows I don't want to be ill again 

 — but for the rest, we can have bread 

 and butter and eggs and cheese sent from 



the store, we can import zweiback and 

 hard-tack. We can live on rice like the 

 Japanese or on baked potatoes like Robert 

 Browning. And on a rainy day, we can 

 have a very orgy of cooking, if you like. 



"Besides, I'm not so limp as I once was. 

 I could do some 'chores.' There's no 

 work so noble for a woman as domestic 

 housework," I said, warming to the sub- 

 ject, "nothing that so suitably exercises 

 body and soul and spirit as the care of a 

 house and the preparation of food; nothing 

 in which it is so essential that a woman train 

 her daughter, so that " 



"So that if she doesn't marry," broke in 

 Clarky, "she is sure of a situation in which 

 there is little competition. I know all 

 that sort of thing. You've read that in 

 the women's magazines that are edited by 

 men and in articles written by women who 

 don't do it. I've seen plenty of women 

 broken down by housework, and farmers' 

 wives go insane from the monotony of this 

 same charming occupation." 



"It's the monotony, not the work," I 

 protested. "There's no need of its being 

 so monotonous." 



Then I expounded my theory. That if 

 we lived out of doors, the house would 

 keep in good order; that with grass to the 

 doorstep and no furniture, how could there 

 be dusting? We could breakfast on wild 

 strawberries — not spend an hour or so 

 picking them, but go up the hill and bring 

 ourselves to the breakfast. For our supper, 

 we could go to the doorstep with bread 

 and milk, like Wordsworth's Little Cottage 

 Girl, and we could " take our little porrin- 

 gers and eat our supper there." I ex- 

 plained to her that we would consider the 

 season; we would put the unavoidable 

 "chores," into that part of the day which 

 out-of-doors was the least interesting. 

 As for the dishes, once a day they could be 

 piled in the little cart and I could trundle 

 them to the brook. I would place them 

 carefully in the gravel, then, while I was 

 taking my nap, the brook would be kind 

 enough to wash them. Undoubtedly they 

 would be quite as well done as by Josie 

 Pratt, and how infinitely more poetic the 

 operation. Thus we would save the most 

 valuable part of the day for the June 

 weather. 



"According to the thrushes," I said, 

 "the evening and the morning are the time 

 for spiritual refreshment. The wood- 

 chucks seem to be at liberty at three in 

 the afternoon." 



Clarky looked at me keenly. "Sounds 

 like Mr. Stephen McLeod," she remarked. 



"I hope it does," I answered, "Mr. 

 McLeod is a man of much intelligence and 

 a fine sense of proportion." 



Clarky took off her spectacles, pushed 

 her dark hair back as she always did when 

 considering deeply. 



"Miss Caroline," she said, at last, "there 

 are always chores, plain, unaffected unat- 

 tractive, unavoidable chores, even in keep- 

 ing a place like this in order. No amount 

 of garlanding with poetry, or of obscuring 



with Stephen McLeod's hallucination will 

 make them less chores. Some days it 

 will be amusing to "tote" the dishes to the 

 brook, as you say. Some days it won't. 

 And on the days when it isn't amusing, 

 the thing has still to be done. That is 

 the very devil of housework — its inces- 

 sant recurrence. 



"However, make a good laundry con- 

 nection; get a fireless cooker; have Mrs. 

 Tarbox or her equivalent once a week, and 

 I'm with you. The wild-strawberry break- 

 fast is no good; grass is too wet; as for the 

 Little Cottage Girl supper — she took her 

 bread and milk to the cemetery, if I remem- 

 ber correctly, where were the little brother 

 and sister who probably died of improper 

 diet or imperfect sanitation; but the rest is 

 possible. But " 



"But what?" I asked. 



'It strikes me you're getting well," she 



said. 



Chapter XIII 



It was after Mrs. Tarbox's departure 

 that Aunt Cassandra began to get a bit 

 nervous about me. 



She needn't have been; we were absurdly 

 happy. For the first time in my life the 

 days were one long picnic — that's not the 

 right word, for a picnic can be deadly 

 boring. Rather should I say that the days 

 were full of joyous adventure, and as for 

 any sense of Duty, I think I must have 

 planted it at the bottom of the very deep, 

 post-like hole we dug for the longest-rooted 

 hollyhock. Even the cutworms ceased 

 from troubling; and as for the garden, 

 Clarky had a charming little cultivator, a 

 very arsenal in the completeness of. its 

 equipment. It was plow and cultivator 

 and marker, a sod cutter and sower and 

 weeder — everything combined. More- 

 over, it was good to look upon; its handles 

 were painted red, its teeth and action parts 

 a fine grass green. Clarky took the greatest 

 delight in trying its various stops and gaits 

 and gears. With all its complexity of 

 resource, the little thing was light to handle 

 and once a week she pushed it between the 

 rows. That was the weeding ! 



As for the watering — she got an in- 

 terminable length of rubber hose, fastened 

 it on our one faucet in the kitchen, led it 

 out of the window and down to the garden 

 or around the house. Then she'd turn on 

 the faucet in the kitchen and let the water 

 run between the furrows as if she were 

 irrigating; the day after, she cultivated; 

 and then, for a week, we let the garden 

 alone. And the plants flourished; they 

 grew like the wicked and the green bay tree. 



"The simple life," said Clarky, as she 

 stood surveying her irrigation scheme, "is 

 only possible when labor is reduced to a 

 minimum by up-to-date conveniences." 



Also once a week did Stephen come up. 

 That was Sunday afternoon. He had 

 stock, he said, in the pasture above us, and 

 had to go up the hill "to see if everything 

 was all right." 



(To be continued) 



