Nobody Part 67

Mrs. Barclay held her peace then, and for some time afterwards. The spring came on, the days became soft and lovely, after March had blown itself out; the trees began to put forth leaves, the blue-birds were darting about, like skyey messengers; robins were whistling, and daffodils were bursting, and gra.s.s was green. One lovely warm morning, when everything without seemed beckoning to her, Mrs. Barclay threw on a shawl and hat, and made her way out to the old garden, which up to this day she had never entered.

She found the great wide enclosure looking empty and bare enough. The two or three old apple trees hung protectingly over the wooden bench in the middle, their branches making pretty tracery against the tender, clear blue of the sky; but no shade was there. The branches only showed a little token of swelling and bursting buds, which indeed softened in a lovely manner the lines of their interlacing network, and promised a plenty of green shadow by and by. No shadow was needed at present, for the sun was too gentle; its warmth was welcome, and beneficent, and kindly. The old cherry tree in the corner was beginning to open its wealth of white blossoms; everywhere else the bareness and brownness of winter was still reigning, only excepting the patches of green turf around the boles and under the spreading boughs of the trees here and there. The garden was no garden, only a spread of soft, up-turned brown loam. It looked a desolate place to Mrs. Barclay.

In the midst of it, the one point of life and movement was Lois. She was in a coa.r.s.e, stout stuff dress, short, and tucked up besides, to keep it out of the dirt. Her hands were covered with coa.r.s.e, thick gloves, her head with a little old straw hat. At the moment Mrs.

Barclay came up, she was raking a patch of ground which she had carefully marked out, and bounded with a trampled footway; she was bringing it with her rake into a condition of beautiful level smoothness, handling her tool with light dexterity. As Mrs. Barclay came near, she looked up with a flash of surprise and a smile.

"I have found you," said the lady. "So this is what you are about!"

"It is what I am always about at this time of year."

"What are you doing?"

"Just here I am going to put in radishes and lettuce."

"Radishes and lettuce! And that is instead of French and philosophy!"

"This is philosophy," said Lois, while with a neat movement of her rake she threw off some stones which she had collected from the surface of the bed. "Very good philosophy. Surely the philosophy of life is first--to live."

Mrs. Barclay was silent a moment upon this.

"Are radishes and lettuce the first thing you plant in the spring, then?"

"O dear, no!" said Lois. "Do you see all that corner? that's in potatoes. Do you see those slightly marked lines--here, running across from the walk to the wall?--peas are there. They'll be up soon. I think I shall put in some corn to-morrow. Yonder is a bed of radishes and lettuce just out of the ground. We'll have some radishes for tea, before you know it."

"And do you mean to say that _you_ have been planting potatoes? _you?_"

"Yes," said Lois, looking at her and laughing. "I like to plant potatoes. In fact, I like to plant anything. What I do not always like so well, is the taking care of them after they are up and growing."

Mrs. Barclay sat down and watched her. Lois was now tracing delicate little drills across the breadth of her nicely-prepared bed; little drills all alike, just so deep and just so far apart. Then she went to a basket hard by for a little paper of seeds; two papers; and began deftly to scatter the seed along the drills, with delicate and careful but quick fingers. Mrs. Barclay watched her till she had filled all the rows, and began to cover the seeds in; that, too, she did quick and skilfully.

"That is not fit work for you to do, Lois."

"Why not?"

"You have something better to do."

"I do not see how I can. This is the work that is given me."

"But any common person could do that?"

"We have not got the common person to do it," said Lois, laughing; "so it comes upon an uncommon one."

"But there is a fitness in things."

"So you will think, when you get some of my young lettuce." The drills were fast covered in, but there were a good many of them, and Lois went on talking and working with equal spirit.

"I do not think I shall--" Mrs. Barclay answered the last statement.

"I like to do this, Mrs. Barclay. I like to do it very much. I _am_ pulled a little two ways this spring--but that only shows this is good for me."

"How so?"

"When anybody is living to his own pleasure, I guess he is not in the best way of improvement."

"Is there no one but you to do all the weeding, by and by, when the garden will be full of plants?"

"n.o.body else," said Lois.

"That must take a great deal of your time!"

"Yes," said Lois, "it does; that and the fruit-picking."

"Fruit-picking! Mercy! Why, child, _must_ you do all that?"

"It is my part," said Lois pleasantly. "Charity and Madge have each their part. This is mine, and I like it better than theirs. But it is only so, Mrs. Barclay, that we are able to get along. A gardener would eat up our garden. I take only my share. And there is a great deal of pleasure in it. It is pleasant to provide for the family's wants, and to see the others enjoy what I bring in;--yes, and to enjoy it myself.

And then, do you see how pleasant the work is! Don't you like it out here this morning?"

Mrs. Barclay cast a glance around her again. There was a slight spring haze in the air, which seemed to catch and hold the sun's rays and diffuse them in gentle beneficence. Through it the opening cherry blossoms gave their tender promise; the brown, bare apple trees were softened; an indescribable breath of hope and life was in the air, to which the birds were doing all they could to give expression; there was a delicate joy in Nature's face, as if at being released from the bands of Winter and having her hands free again. The smell of the upturned earth came fresh to Mrs. Barclay's nostrils, along with a salt savour from the not distant sea. Yes, it was pleasant, with a rare and wonderful pleasantness; and yet Mrs. Barclay's eyes came discontentedly back to Lois.

"It would be possible to enjoy all this, Lois, if you were not doing such evil work."

"Evil work! O no, Mrs. Barclay. The work that the Lord gives anybody to do cannot be evil. It must be the very best thing he can do. And I do not believe I should enjoy the spring--and the summer--and the autumn--near so well, if I were not doing it."

"Must one be a gardener, to have such enjoyment?"

"_I_ must," said Lois, laughing. "If I do not follow my work, my work follows me; and then it comes like a taskmaster, and carries a whip."

"But, Lois! that sort of work will make your hands rough."

Lois lifted one of her hands in its thick glove, and looked at it.

"Well," she said, "what then? What are hands made for?"

"You know very well what I mean. You know a time may come when you would like to have your hands white and delicate."

"The time is come now," said Lois, laughing. "I have not to wait for it. I like white hands, and delicate hands, as well as anybody. Mine must do their work, all the same. Something might be said for my feet, too, I suppose," she added, with another laugh.

At the moment she had finished outlining an other bed, and was now trampling a little hard border pathway round it, making the length of her foot the breadth of the pathway, and setting foot to foot close together, so bit by bit stamping it round. Mrs. Barclay looked on, and wished some body else could have looked on, at the bright, fresh face under the little old hat, and the free action and spirit and accuracy with which everything that either feet or hands did was done. Somehow she forgot the coa.r.s.e dress, and only saw the delicate creature in it.

"Lois, I do not like it!" she began again. "Do you know, some people are very particular about these little things--fastidious about them.

You may one day yet want to please one of those very men."

"Not unless he wants to please me first!" said Lois, with a glance from her path-treading.

"Of course. I am supposing that."