Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/165

 would think it would be no great matter to paint a thing like that."

Alice was so touched and pleased with the charming gift that she came over herself that same day after tea to thank Anson. It was June, and she found him working in his garden. She stepped lightly down the garden walk, clad in a flowered muslin, with a broad leghorn hat pushed back from her face. Anson did not see her coming. He was on his knees, weeding the border. Alice stood for a moment, watching him, and a wistful look came into her dark-blue eyes. Somehow he looked so poor in his old clothes and so lonesome, so different from the Anson of a few years ago. There he knelt, pulling up the ugly weeds, and tossing them into a basket that stood beside him. She wished, vaguely, that he had been planting something. The sight of him gave her a heartache that she longed to ease. If she could only give him some little thing, just something bright and sweet from her own abundance. She reached out her hand and plucked a spray of laburnum that grew beside the path. Yet no. It would be foolish to give him a flower out of his own garden, and she hastily tucked it into her bodice. Anson heard the sudden movement, and, turning, saw her standing there in the slanting sunlight. He got up and brushed the earth from his hands with his pocket-handkerchief, which he threw far away from him as Alice came toward him with outstretched hands.