Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/157

1913.] ought. With a generous impulse she turned back, and hastened after Brian.

She could not find him 4t first among the windings of the paths, where here and there shrubs grew large. But presently she turned a corner and came upon him. To her surprise he was just rising from a stooping position, and was dusting off his hands as if he had been gardening. The earth before him, well in from the border, had just been disturbed. She remembered that this was the place where her mother had ordered a late seeding of asters. Now, to Harriet a seed-bed was as sacred as Bridget's kitchen.

She was too indignant to notice that he started quite violently, and flushed to his very hair. “Just weeding,” he exclaimed confusedly.

“Oh, please don't touch anything in the garden,” she cried. “You can’t be sure that you have n't pulled up a flowering plant. What was it you took out?”

“I don't know,” mumbled Brian. “I threw it behind me. Here, I 'll help you find it.”

But though for a minute they looked carefully, nothing resembling a plant was found on the smooth walk or the carefully raked beds,

“I hope it was n’t important,” said Brian.

She looked again at the seed-bed. "I suppose it was n't,” she admitted. “Now I think of it, I don’t see why there should be either a weed or a plant there. John sowed aster seed there yesterday, and he does n’t usually leave weeds where he has been working.”

“Well, he did this time,” retorted Brian, abruptly.

“Why, Brian,” she cried, “I did 't mean to doubt you.”

He lowered at her. “And if vour old seeds have n't sprouted, then I could n't hurt them anyway. You need n't have been so huffy about it.”

Harriet felt that she had been rude. I 'm afraid we ‘re rather fussy about the garden,” she murmured weakly.

“Well,” declared Brian, “vou need n't fret any more, I ‘ll never touch a thing in your garden again.” He turned and left her.

Greatly depressed. Harriet went slowly back to the house. Once she thought of the wallet. “I ‘ll give it to Father or Mother,” she thought. Pelham had disappeared from the living-room, the piano was no solace in her present mood, and she sat and read fitfully among the magazines until the sound of wheels on the driveway told her that her father and mother had returned. She met Vol. XLI.—18.