In the early afternoon, after the pieman had gone on his way, Brooke wheeled her father into the garden, while she planted the seeds of mignonette, bluets, sweet-sultan, and China pinks, and the second planting of sweet peas of Miss Keith’s saving, in the long rows that she had advised, for now there would be a double reason for having jugs of fragrant flowers on the table of the honeysuckle-screened south porch, which Brooke had christened the Tea House. Tatters was worried. Indoors he stayed by his master, outdoors he followed his mistress—under the present circumstances, what was his duty? First he licked Adam Lawton’s hand persistently, and then followed Brooke along the line she had carefully marked with stick and string, according to Stead’s gardening instructions, until he was made to understand that his footprints in the newly turned earth were not things to be desired; then he returned to the chair. There could be no question that physically Adam Lawton was in every way improving. The use of his hand was gradually returning, and with the aid of a cane he could move slowly from the bed to his chair; he could also play a game of checkers, and though he spoke slowly the words were finished, not broken as at first. Still his thoughts were of the past and lacked connection. A sudden shower of potent April rain fell with sharp sound on Brooke’s seed packages. Gathering them together hastily, she pushed the chair up the sloping platform through the kitchen door that had been widened, and as she did so the fishing pole that the Cub had mended fell clattering to the floor. Stooping to pick it up she noticed that it caught her father’s eye, and as she held it toward him, he grasped it eagerly, saying softly to himself, “My new pole; to-morrow I’ll go fishing, if Enoch Fenton will play hookey too.” The rain increased and by five o’clock had promised to settle into a steady pour that drew a curtain across the river, cut ruts in the roadway, and gullied the soft fields,—a class of storm dreaded in spring in a hillside country, and entirely the reverse of the traditional growing rain. The Cub came in and hung his coat to drip in the porch, and even the water that ran from Pam’s grotesque and stubby tail made a puddle on the floor. “I turned the cows out and shut the gate, because Mr. Fenton said I ought to from now on,” said the Cub, looking at the rain, and then gauging the wind, as it tore downhill, like a veritable native. “I guess I’ll go back and let ’em in again, just this once. No, I don’t want an umbrella, it’ll only go bust,” he added, as he stepped out the door, closing it with much difficulty against the rising tide of wind and rain.