CONTENTS
PAGE
John Gayther's Garden 3
I What I Found in the Sea 9
Told by John Gayther
II The Bushwhacker Nurse 39
Told by the Daughter of the House
III The Lady in the Box 71
Told by John Gayther
IV The Cot and the Rill 109
Told by the Mistress of the House
V The Gilded Idol and the King Conch-shell 155
Told by the Master of the House
VI My Balloon Hunt 201
Told by the Frenchman
VII The Foreign Prince and the Hermit's Daughter 223
Told by Pomona and Jonas
VIII The Conscious Amanda 249
Told by the Daughter of the House
IX My Translatophone 279
Told by the Old Professor
X The Vice-consort 307
Told by the Next Neighbor
XI Blackgum ag'in' Thunder 341
Told by John Gayther
JOHN GAYTHER'S GARDEN
The garden did not belong to John Gayther; he merely had charge of it.
At certain busy seasons he had some men to help him in his work, but for
the greater part of the year he preferred doing everything himself.
It was a very fine garden over which John Gayther had charge. It
extended this way and that for long distances. It was difficult to see
how far it did extend, there were so many old-fashioned box hedges;
so many paths overshadowed by venerable grape-arbors; and so many
far-stretching rows of peach, plum, and pear trees. Fruit, bushes, and
vines there were of which the roll need not be called; and flowers grew
everywhere. It was one of the fancies of the Mistress of the House--and
she inherited it from her mother--to have flowers in great abundance, so
that wherever she might walk through the garden she would always find
them.
Often when she found them massed too thickly she would go in among them
and thin them out with apparent recklessness, pulling them up by the
roots and throwing them on the path, where John Gayther would come and
find them and take them away. This heroic action on the part of the
Mistress of the House pleased John very much. He respected the fearless
spirit which did not hesitate to make sacrifices for the greater good,
no matter how many beautiful blossoms she scattered on the garden path.
John Gayther might have thinned out all this superfluous growth himself,
but he knew the Mistress liked to do it, and he left for her gloved
hands many tangled jungles of luxuriant bloom.
The garden was old, and rich, and aristocratic. It acted generously in
the way of fruit, flowers, and vegetables, as if that were something it
was expected to do, an action to which it was obliged by its nobility.
It would be impossible for it to forget that it belonged to a fine old
house and a fine old family.
John Gayther could not boast of lines of long descent, as could the
garden and the family. He was comparatively a new-comer, and had not
lived in that garden more than seven or eight years; but in that time he
had so identified himself with the place, and all who dwelt upon it,
that there were times when a stranger might have supposed him to be the
common ancestor to the whole estate.
