Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/247



"And is she going to live at the place, too?" queried the young lady sharply.

"Babe's going to capture a corporation or trust or something, and have oceans of money and build on a wing and a conservatory and make Italian gardens, I believe," he answered, pleasantly enough.

"But I'd just as soon she left the gardens alone," he went on, "the rest of us like 'em the way they are. There was one separate one on the west side, just for Uncle Robert's chrysanthemums. He used to work all the morning there and then read in the afternoon. He'd sit on the side porch with his pipe and Bismarck—he was an old collie—and he did tell the bulliest yarns. He helped us with lessons, too. I don't know what we'd have done without Uncle Rob. Father was so busy—he had a big country practice and he used to get terribly tired—and we went to Uncle Rob for everything. He got us out of more scrapes, Ridge and me—

"There were tiger lillies in the south garden and lots of clumps of peonies. Grandmother put those there. And fennel and mint. Mother used to like dahlias—it seems as if she must have had a quarter