270 
THE LADIES’ FLORAL CABINET. 
through her mind for many a day. Now seemed as good 
a time as she would ever get, so she spoke bravely out: 
“ George, will you let James wheel gravel for me a 
little while to-morrow, or some day this week? Just 
enough to cover a pathway from the front door to the 
gate.” 
“ Wheel gravel for nonsense like that when the spring 
work is coming on so fast that we can’t half see to it ? you 
must be crazy ! I took you for a sensible woman and not 
one to bother with such folderol as that. A path clear 
through all that nice grass, too; I guess not! ” And Mrs. 
Gray said no more, knowing it would be useless. A 
little later, Jennie, aged fourteen, the only daughter of 
the house, came in. Recalling her father’s unusually 
kind manner at the supper table a half hour before, and 
not knowing that her mother had already ruffled his 
temper by an unfortunate request, .she thought it a favor¬ 
able opportunity to put in a plea for something about 
which she had long been building beautiful hopes. 
“ Father, may I have some flower-beds in the front- 
yard this summer ? ” 
This was a still more preposterous request than his 
wife had made, and was received accordingly. 
“ Cut the soil up and waste the grass so that you can 
waste your time and money on trashy posies ! No ! and 
don’t you ask me again.” 
Jennie persisted, however. 
“ But Lettie Green has stick a pretty yard; Bennie has 
helped her make gravel paths all around the beds, and 
they have got a lot of seeds which they sent away to 
Michigan for, and she will divide with me, she says, if I 
want them, and it won’t cost me a penny, and—” 
“ I tell you I won’t hear another word ! There’s grass 
enough cut from that yard to half winter a cow every 
year, and I’d like to see myself throwing it away on fool¬ 
ishness like that. Besides you and your mother’ll have 
enough to do this summer without spending your time 
in fussing with flowers.” 
That settled the matter; Jennie was silenced, and, 
after finishing the work about which she was helping, 
went upstairs to cry a little over her disappointment, and 
then to go on as before, doing her manifold duties, brave, 
patient child that she was, hopeful that “ by and by ” a 
blessed change of some sort might come into the lives 
of her mother and herself, who, it seemed to her, were 
always required to give up something which, but for a 
selfish, tyrannical will, might easily be theirs. That is 
what the feeling in her mind amounted to, although she 
was scarcely aware of it herself. 
All harmony was destroyed for the evening, and, urgent 
duties being done, the mother, too, left the kitchen with 
its gruff, grumbling occupant enveloped in a cloud of 
smoke, and stole out the door; and though she shed no 
tears—she had given that up long ago—she was deeply 
hurt. 
There was a full, beautiful moon and the exterior of 
the great old farmhouse was lit up brightly, and also its 
surroundings, which were practical enough in their na¬ 
ture. The wide front-yard lay spread out under the 
moonlight in all its barrenness of aspect, and, spite of her 
strict ideas of wifely duty, a host of rebellious thoughts 
crowded through her mind. This for many years had 
been the old homestead of the Claysons, her mother’s 
family. 
The time had been when that great square of level 
ground lying between the house and the road had been 
all ablaze with dear old-fashioned flowers, pinks, peonies, 
sweet-williams, ragged robins, in gorgeous clusters; 
thrifty and beautiful lilacs and sweet syringas, here and 
there, and beautiful trees of feathery foliaged tamarisk 
and of mountain ash, which lent the blaze of their 
brilliant red berries in the fall to atone in part for the 
loss of the summer flowers which lay withered at their 
feet. 
While the father and mother had lived the flowers and 
shrubbery had been left iindisturbed, but first the father, 
then the silvery-haired mother, gave up the reins of gov¬ 
ernment for robes and palms and a home in their Father’s 
mansion, and then an immediate change came over every¬ 
thing about the old place, but nothing hurt like the dese¬ 
cration of the old front-door yard. Never would Hester 
Gray forget the day that the hired man was set at tearing 
up the lilacs and syringas and cutting down the tamarisk 
and mountain-ash trees preparatory to the ploughing and 
planting of the ground. The broken roots seemed to up¬ 
braid her as they were torn from the mellow soil which 
had nurtured them so long. Only two maples standing 
in opposite corners of the fence at each side of the gate 
were left, and many times she had trembled at threats of 
their being cut. Since then the yard had been alternately 
planted with vegetables or sown to grass seed, for several 
seasons, until now, when there was a prospect of a more 
than usually prosperous season, it had seemed just pos¬ 
sible to Mrs. Gray that a sort of compromise might be 
effected in the making of a gravel path through the old 
yard, which fortunately had borne a crop of hay last 
season and was designed for the same purpose this year. 
But she must give up the plan, for the will of her husband 
was her law ; the springing grass was lovely, to be sure, 
and later it would be still more beautiful in its waning 
luxuriance, but nothing like the beauty which had once 
existed there when she as a child had played “ go seek ” 
among the lilacs and syringas, or that which might still 
exist there if she were only allowed to work her own will 
for a little while, with Jennie to help her. 
Poor little Jennie ! so she had been cherishing plans 
too ; that knowledge made her own disappointment all 
the harder to bear, and when Hester Gray turned to enter 
the kitchen again she would have been ashamed to have 
anyone read the bitter thoughts in her mind. 
In the kitchen door sat her husband, still smoking. 
He had not noted her unusual absence and the silence 
round about, neither was he aware that he had been 
cruelly mean toward his wife and daughter in his denial 
of their requests. He was merely calculating the profits 
on ten or a dozen boarders at a given price per week 
apiece, and scarcely knew when his wife passed in and 
lighted the lamp preparatory to taking up her work for 
the evening. 
The months of early spring passed away and the in¬ 
creasing warmth of the weather warned those who were 
to leave the city for the summer that the time of their 
