Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/261

Rh from the widow's with guilty stealth, she took up her residence on the high hilltop, in a room from one window of which she could look out through the Golden Gate on the broad bosom of the Pacific, while from the other she could see the dappled sweep of the Alameda hills, with Berkeley and Oakland clustering about their bases.

A life uneventful and monotonous now began for the solitary girl. The days in the house on the hill passed with the even, colorless rapidity of days full of uninteresting duties and bereft of the stimulus of hope. Viola plodded on doggedly, with her head down and her eyes on the furrow before her. Work had cropped up quickly, and she turned to it with dull resolution. In the back of the house some former tenant had built a small greenhouse, which, during the Defoes' occupancy, had been left in dusty desuetude. Being granted the use of it, she cleaned and repaired it, and here once more plied her old graceful trade of raising plants.

Her friend the Kearney Street florist, to whom the colonel in his grand days had given many profitable orders, was glad to help the daughter of his old patron. Once again Viola found herself supplying his shops with the delicate ferns which grew so luxuriantly under her intelligent care. Besides this, he now and then engaged her to assist in making up floral pieces