"The librarian looked at him. "How long were you here?" he asked. "I"ve been told that the library was shut up for two weeks."
""I was here for three quarters of a day," said Abner. "That"s about as near as I can calculate."
"The librarian took up a pencil and made a calculation.
""By the way," said he, "you must have done some business. I miss our copy of Buck"s Theological Dictionary; but I find no entry about it."
""That was took out as change," said Abner. "Five cents for a duodecimo for a week, and the rest in change. If the woman hasn"t brought it back she owes a week"s fine."
""Who was the woman?" asked the librarian.
""I don"t know," said Abner; "but she has a daughter with plaited hair and a small sister. While I"m in town I"ll try to look "em up."
""In the meantime," said Mr. Brownsill, "I"ll have to charge you for the book; and, deducting your pay for three quarters of a day, you now owe me seventy-five cents. I don"t suppose there"s any use talking about the fines I have got down against you?"
""I don"t believe there is," said Abner.
"The librarian could not help smiling, so dejected was the tone in which these last words were spoken.
""By the way," said he, "how about your great fight you were talking about--blackgum ag"in" thunder? How did that turn out?"
"Abner in his turn smiled.
""Blackgum was split as fine as matches," said he."
"I can"t help feeling sorry for the old fellow," said the Next Neighbor, when John had concluded his story. "I always have sympathy with great ambitions."
"And if Joe Pearson had got far enough north," said the Mistress of the House, "he would have found no eggs, but he might have stumbled over the North Pole."
"It is a pity the old fellow had to tell his wife," said the Master of the House. "Women ruin great ambitions by too much common-sense. A great many of the inventions we now consider necessary would have been utterly lost to us if some men"s brains had not been a little addled. A woman would have set them straight, and that would have been the end. That is the reason so few women are inventors; they have too much sense."
"That is a very left-handed compliment," said the Daughter of the House.
"You are always decrying inventions, which is strange. How would you like to sail a ship without steam?"
"It would be a great deal pleasanter, my dear, and much cleaner."
"There are patent contrivances for garden-work," said John Gayther, "and I don"t say that they don"t help, especially in planting-time; but, like the captain, I prefer the old ways that bring the gardener and the earth close together. The old, simple instruments seem like friends. I feel as if something went from me through the hoe-handle to the plants; and when the seed drops from my hands instead of from a seeder, it seems to me it takes a message direct from me to the earth that receives it."
The stories are all told. The winter has come. The orchard is stripped of its leaves, and, sere and brown, they cover the garden paths and are strewn over the box borders. The fruits are all garnered. The bare vines that cover the summer-house are like dead memories of what has been. The vegetable-beds are empty. The black frost has settled upon bloom and foliage on the upper terrace. The sweet, blithe song of the red thrush has ceased. The family have gone to a sunnier clime. And John Gayther walks alone in his garden.