Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/170

158 They agreed amicably enough on the dividing fence between the two properties. At least, Mrs. Stanley thought a lattice affair you could grow things over would be about right; and Boyd thought so, too. But when the fence was once up and it came time to plant the "things," they locked horns. Boyd was in favour of blue moonflowers. There were some over a back fence down at the Fremont and he liked them. Also the Fremont gardener told him they grew very fast. But Mrs. Stanley was opposed.

"You don't know what you are talking about," she stated in her positive manner. "They do grow fast, to be sure; but they eat the soil, and they scatter all over the place, and they'll rot out your lattice, and a dozen other things. What you want is a banksia, or a Cecil Bruner or a Cherokee."

Boyd proved obstinate, for once. There ensued a deadlock. The space along the fence apparently remained unplanted. Then one morning Mrs. Stanley, clumping along the boundary lines in her brogans, saw some tender shoots pushing their way out of the soil. She bent incredulously to examine them. Other similar shoots were spaced along the fence. They were moonflowers!

This was too serious for informal action. Mrs. Stanley at once clumped back to her house where she indited a note. In it she called Mr. Boyd's attention to the fact that she had equal rights in a line fence and that she unalterably opposed moonflowers. This she dispatched to the Fremont by hand.

Within the half hour she had the reply:

Mrs. Stanley was a staunch old warrior who could take blows as well as give them.

"Humph!" she sniffed, when she read this. "Just like a man! Well, he'll have to learn."