Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/150

 of the honeysuckle hedge that fronted on the roadway, investing him so ingenuously with the counterpart of her own personal interest in it all.

"I have always had such a pretty garden," she had said before she left him; "and I love it so. And this year, you know, I am more ambitious about it than ever. I am so glad you are going to take care of it for me."

"I am afraid," he had answered her honestly, and he remembered the fear that had been his lest she should take him at his word, "that I do not know very much about gardening, and that—"

"You love flowers, too," she had interrupted, shaking her head. "I can see that; so you will love your work, and then—and then, well, it can't help but be well done, can it?"—and she had smiled at him, and nodded brightly—and he had begun to work—in her garden.

That night in his cell, and the nights thereafter, there came to cheer and brighten him not one face only, but two—Mrs. Merton's and Janet Rand's; and when thereafter, with each dawn, the first threads of morning sunlight stole across the corridor from the high windows and, eluding the steel bars of his cell door, awakened him to the rounds of another day, it was to a day different from those he had known before—a day whose prospect no longer tortured him, but one which now he welcomed with almost eager gladness.

The fearful sense of isolation was gone. During the day, the warden would sometimes stop and speak to him; or perhaps Doctor Kreelmar would halt at his elbow to fling a good-natured, jesting warning at him not to plant the bulbs upside down—but mostly it was Janet