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Show fi$33he WW of $ fSyWINFKiJ 'r COPyRIOHT sy 0CXJ6L6OAV. tv t CO. I CHAPTER. XIV Continued. : labile la-bile holds, she holds!" I cried. "But we've forgotten to put stones for tlie water to fall over upon. It will undermine under-mine the structure if we don't." " 'Structure' is good." laughed Stella, regarding our little six-foot-Ions' and eightoen-inch-high piece of engineering. We shouted for Peter, and ran to the nearest stone wall, tugging back some flat stones, which we placed directly di-rectly below the dam for the overflow to fall on. Then, while Stella sat on the bank and watched the water rise, I shoveled some of the earth removed from the basin into the now abandoned temporary channel and packed it down. "Say. we can have fish in here," cried Peter, who was also watching the water rise. 4 You can have a four-legged fish." laughed Stella, as Buster came down the bank with a gleeful bark and went splash into the pool, emerging to shake himself and spray us all. I had scarce finished filling in the temporary trench, and was setting the poor uprooted plants back Into the bed. with my back turned, when I heard a simultaneous shout from Teter and goesl" cried Stella. "One, two, three and over she St?lla. I faced around just in time to see the first line of the water crawling over the top of the dam, and a second later it splashed on the stones below: behind it came the waterfall. Stella was dancing up and down. "Oh, it's a real waterfall!" she cried. I "I've got a real waterfall nil my own! Come on downstream and look back at It!" From the grove below It certainly did look pretty, flashing in the morning sun. "And when there are Iris blossoms, blos-soms, great Japanese Iris, nodding over it!" I exclaimed. "Oh. can't we plant those right away?" she asked. "No." said I. "Gardens are like Rome, I'm afraid." We went back and surveyed our rool at close range. It was clearing now. But the second pile of earth remained to be removed from the west side. Fe-ter Fe-ter anil I carted that off in wheelbarrows wheelbar-rows at once, dumping part of it into the hole where we had dug the sand, and the rest into a heap behind some bushes upstream for future compost. Then we climbed the orchard slope for dinner. Midway we looked back. There glistened bur pool, a twenty-foot ; brown crystal mirror, with the four : Bower beds all askew about It. the , ragged weeds and bushes pressing: them close, and beyond it only the rough ground .1 had cleared with a ' brush scythe, and the scraggly trees by the wall. "Alas," said I, "now we've built a ' pool, we've got to build a whole garden gar-den to go with it!" "But It tinkles! Hear It tinkle!" cried Stella. We listened, hand In hand. The tiny waterfall was certainly tinkling, a cool, delicate, plashy sound, which mingled with the sound of the breeze In the trees above our bends, and the sweet twitterings of birds. "Oh. John. It's a very idee dam. and a very nice world!" she whispered, as we went through the door. "And, after all, it seems to me the greatest fun of gardening is all the nice other things It makes you want to do after you've doner the first one." "That," fp.Ii I sententlously. "Is perhaps, per-haps, the secret of all successful living." liv-ing." CHAPTER XV. The Nice Other Things. A pool of water twenty feet long shining In the sun. or glimmering deeply deep-ly in the twilight, that and nothing else save a few straggling annuals wrongly placed about It yet It made Twin Fires over. It caused us weeks of toll, It g"t Into our dreams. It got Into our poc kets, too. "Now I know why sunken gardens nre so called." said Stella, us she llg-ti'-ed out the cost of the fall bulb planting plant-ing we bad already planned. "It's because you sink ho much money In Vrn "' (if conrw- there was little that we could do to the margin of the pool that Kinnmor. but there was plenty to do beyond tie' uinrgln. The first thing of ill was to place the (lower beds differently. dif-ferently. Tills took considerable experimenting, ex-perimenting, ami Stella, being Ingenious, Ingen-ious, hit upon a scheme for testing various va-rious p'i -llrle arrangements. She filled nil sorts of I I eept.'ieles. frum tumblers to piteiMTs, with cut flowers, low and lech, and Mood them In masses here Mid there, till the spot w.m found Where they looked the be-d. As the pool centered on the line between the front door of the boose and the' yet-to yet-to I, c built garden bench against the tonc wall, and as the orchard came don n to within forty feet of the brook Oil the slope from the bouse, II WIM Homeihii.g of n problem to lead until rally from a gnis y orchard slope Into a n.'tcr feature and a bit of almost formal gardening, without making the , o ltion t"T and abrupt. We finally solved it with the aid of a lawn mower, flower- beds and imagination. doing over the grass between 'the last apple trees and the brook again and again with the mower. I finally reduced that section to something like a lawn, and also kept mowed a straight path from the pool up to the front door. Then, beginning Just beyond the last shadows, we cut n bed. thirty inches wide, on each side of the line of the path, running parallel with it to within ten feet of the pool; then they swung to left and right, following the curve of the bank until they flanked the pool. By planting low flowers flow-ers at the beginning, and gradually Increasing In-creasing their height till we bad larkspur lark-spur and hollyhocks aud mallow in the flanking beds, we could both make the trausition from orchard to water feature, and also screen off the pool, increasing its intimacy, without, however, how-ever, hiding it from the front door, where it was glimpsed down a path of trees and flowers. Of course we had no flowers now lu mid-July to put into those beds, save what few we could dig up from elsewhere, setting poor little annual phloxes two feet apart: but we could, and did. use them for seedbeds for next year's perennials, and to the eye of faith they were beautiful. Now we were confronted by the problem of the other side of the pool, which included the problem of how to get to the other side! Stella suggested tentatively a tiny Japanese moon bridge above the pool, but I would have none of it. "The only way to build a Japanese garden In New England is to utilize .New England features," I Insisted. "We won't copy anybody." "All right." she answered, "then we want stepping stones above the pool, and some more down below the dam. where we can see the waterfall." "More suitable and much easier," I agreed. Once more we robbed the stone wall, building our two flanking paths of stepping-stones to the other side of the brook. On the other side we decided to eliminate elim-inate all flower beds in the open, merely mere-ly planting Iris and forget-me-not on the rim of the pool. We would clear out a wide semicircle of lawn, with the bench at the center of the circumference, circum-ference, ami plant our remaining flowers flow-ers against the shrubbery on the sides, which was chiefly the wild red osier dogwood (cornus stolouifera). I got n brush scythe, a hatchet, a spade, a grub hoe and a rake, and we went to work. Work Is certainly the word. It was not difficult to clear the brush and the tall, rank weeds and grasses away from our semicircle, which was hard ly more than thirty feet in diameter, but to spade up the black soil thereafter, there-after, to eliminate the long, tenacious roots of the witch grass anil the weeds, to clear out the stubborn stumps of Innumerable In-numerable little trees and w lid shrubs which bad overrun the dace, to spread evenly the big pile of soli we had excavated ex-cavated from the pool, to reduce It all to a clean, level condition for sowing grass, was more than I had bargained for. Stella gave up helping, for It was beyond her strength: but I kept on. through the long, hot July afternoons, and at last had It ready. The time of year was anything but propitious for sowing grass seed, but we planted it. none the less, trusting that In such a low, moist spot It might make a catch. Then we turned to the bench. "Gracious, you have to be everything every-thing to be a gardener, don't you?" Stella laughed, as we tried to draw a sketch first, which should satisfy us "The bench ought to balance the old Governor Winthrnp highboy lop of the front door. I'.ut I'm sure I don't know how we're going to make It." "rallcnce," said I, turning the leaves of a catalogue of expensive marble garden furniture. "Just a simple design de-sign of the classic jie. ,od will do. Colonial Co-lonial furniture was based on the Greek orders." We found at last the picture of a marble bench which could be diipll cat ed In general outline with wooden planking, so I telephoned to the lumber lum-ber dealer In the next town for t wo 'J I-Inch-wide chestnut planks, and was fairly staggered by the bill when It came. It appears that a 'J I Inch-wide plank nowadays has to come from North Carolina, or some other distant point, and Is rarer than charity, at least that Is what they told me, "I think It would be cheaper In marble," said Stella. "And II looks to me as If you could make the hi Ii out of one pla nU." "We want another bench on the sundial sun-dial lawn," said I, wisely. "Von do now," said she. "But If I hadn't got two planks." said I, "and had spoiled the first one, then we'd have had to wait two or tin- lays again," "Oh, that wan the reason!" she smiled. I sawed one of the planks Into one six foot nnd two two foot lengths, and rounded the edges of the long piece for the lop, Then, on the I wo short lengths we carefully drew from the picture the outline of the supports on ! the marble original, and went to work with rip saw, hatchet aud drawknife to carve them out. The seasoned chestnut worked hard, and we were half a day about our task. The next day we put the three pieces together : with braces and long screws, planed and sandpapered the wood till we had it smooth, and then painted It with white enamel paint. While the first coat was drying, we made a deep foundation of coal ashes and flat stones for the bench to rest on, and the next afternoon, when the second coat, which Stella had applied before breakfast. ! was nearly dry. I hove the heavy thing on a wheelbarrow, and carted ' It around the road to the point where It was to go. We put a little fresh cement ce-ment on the foundation stones to hold the two legs, and with Mike's aid the bench was lifted over the stone wall, through the hedge of ash-leaf maples, put in place, nnd leveled. Stella hovered hov-ered near, with the can of paint,, to cover our fingermarks and give the top a Anal glistening coat. "There." I cried, as the Job. was done, "we have our pool and our gar-, den bench! We have some of our flowers planted for next year! We have our bit of lawn! Let's go up the orchard to the front door and see bow it looks." I left the wheelbarrow forgotten In the road, and we ran up the slope together, to-gether, turned at the door, and gazed back. The pool shimuiereiT in the afternoon aft-ernoon sun. We could hear the water tinkling over the d'am. Beyond the pool was the dark semicircle of fresh mold that was to be green grass backed by blossoms against the shrubbery, shrub-bery, and finally, at the very rear, now stood the white bench, from this distance dis-tance gleaming like marble. "Fine! It looks line!" I cried. Stella's eyes were squinted judicially. judi-cially. "Oh, dear," she said. "I wish there was a cedar, a tall, slender, dark cedar. Just behind the bench at either P J 'TWA - - v.V'.y,. i i. s. vj "You Have to Be Everything to Be a X4,dener, Don't You?" end. And. John, do yon know, wo ought to have some goldfish In the pool ?" I sighed profoundly. "You men real gardener." s.il.l I. "Nothing Is ever finished:" "I'm afraid I am." she answered. "I'.ut we will have the goldfish, won't w "Yes. and the cedars, too," I replied. "I'll ask Mike when Is the best tune to put 'en) In." Mike was sure that spring was the best time, and there were some good ones 1 1 j in our pasture. "oh. dear, spring Is the best tiuie for everything. It seems to me, and here It's only July !" cried Stella. "Well, anyhow, I'm going to draw a plan of the pool garden, and hang it over my desk." She got paper and pencil and drew the plan, while I lay under an orchard tree listening to the tinkle of the waterfall wa-terfall and watching her while Buster came and licked my face. "I think your iirrangcnieu's of Iris on the edge Is rather formal." I was saying, "and It would be rather more decorous, if not d u'alive. for you to sit upon the bench, and " when we heard a motor rumble over the bridge at the brook, and the engine stop by our side door. CHAPTER XVI. Callero. "Heavens!" cried Stella, leaping to j her feet, "do you suppose ll's callers?" I She looked ruefully at her paint-Vdained paint-Vdained lingers, at her old, soiled khaki garden skirt, which stopped at least six Inches from the ground, and then at lay gel-np, which consisted of a very dirty soft collared shirt, no necktie, khaki trousers that beggared description, descrip-tion, and Moll-crusted boots. Some passengers from the motor were null nu-ll i test hum bly coining up our side pa lb -they were coming around the corner by the lilac bush to the front door they were around I ho lilac bush they were upon us! We looked at them at n large, ample female In a silk gown anything bill ample, at a young woman elaborately elabo-rately dressed, at a smallish man with wis.- hair, while mustache and ruddy complexion, clad In a Juvenile Norfolk Jinliet and while flannels. "They are coming to call!" whispered whis-pered Slella. "The I, old help uwl John, I'm scared!" Cio im c.'i inti i; ; :i. |