Page:The Love Charm.pdf/2



" well, indeed. I see that I shall make quite a gardener of you in time." The fair girl to whom this was addressed looked up in the old man's face with a smile, and then went on with her task. This task consisted in tying up various flowering annuals, which, like many other things in this world, required a little wholesome restraint. A pretty little garden it was on which they were, bestowing so much pains, both useful and ornamental. The straight green rows of beans had some tall stalks among them, that might have emulated their classical ancestor, on which Jack the Giant Killer mounted to the Ogre's castle, and the peas deserved all the praises which it did their master's heart good to hear lavished upon them. There was a background of cabbages, and some artichokes overlooked the neat quickset hedge. Gooseberries and currants were beginning to redden amid their verdant leaves, the cherries were looking a sort of yellow coral, and the small crisp apples were already set. A blue tint was already appearing on the lavender, and the pale young shoots were springing in the box edges which neatly surrounded the small flower-bed. The porch at the door was covered with China roses, pretty delicate frail things without scent. But this was compensated by the cabbage roses, now opening their crimson depths full of summer and sweetness, wearing the richest blush that ever welcomed June. Adam Leslie was a happy man—he had all that a long life had desired—a window looking into a street—his house was the last of a row, a garden, and a small competence. He had past a number of years in the very heart of the city, where a dusty geranium, a pot of mignonette, and a blackbird, were all he had to remind him of his boyhood and his native Argyleshire. He kept a small shop, whose profits just, and only just, maintained a wife and a large family. They were not destined long to be the burthen which in his moments of temper he sometimes called them,—wife, children, were carried one after another to the crowded church-yard in the next street. He wished that they had been buried in the country, for the country to him was the ideal of existence. Years past away, and found him still the same hard-working man, toiling he scarcely knew for what. Suddenly a new tie again bound him to existence. His brother died, and left an orphan daughter to his charge. Once more that dark and narrow staircase was musical with childish feet—and Adam Leslie no longer sat down to an unshared and silent board. The timid quiet little stranger soon became to him even as a child of his own. She had the blue eyes and bright hair of those that he had lost. Like them he soon became anxious for her. The cheek grew paler day by day; the little feet lost their lightness; and the languid lip poured forth less and less frequent its snatches of mountain song. Marion was accustomed to air and exercise, and pined in the close street. "Can I not keep even one to be the joy of my old age," thought the old man as he looked on the pale and spiritless child, who had drawn her stool towards him, and was resting her head on his knee. His resolution was taken—he gave up sundry visions of wealth and civic honours that of late had troubled him overmuch—and gathering