The warm spring days went on, and Annie Darling had not come. Weeds began to devastate her garden, and Wilfred used to look over the fence and wish uncle Jim would do something. Once he spoke to uncle Jim about it, in the way everybody had of making him responsible for the floral well-being of the neighborhood; but Gardener Jim would hardly listen. "You 'tend to it! you 'tend to it!" he cried testily. "I've got all I can do to git them Miller gals' pieces into shape so 't they can sow a few seeds." But one morning he sought out Wilfred, mending a gap in his own orchard wall by the road. "Wilfred," said Gardener Jim, "have you 'tended to Annie's gardin?" He had laid down his hoe and put up a foot on a stone in good position for talk. Wilfred dropped his crowbar and came forward. "Why, no," said he, irritated, he hardly knew why, as if by a call to a forgotten task. "Nobody's asked me to 'tend to it." Jim stood for a moment looking through the tree-spaces, and then his gaze came back to his nephew, and Wilfred, with a start, realized that he had never before had the chance to look into uncle Jim's eyes. Now he found them direct and rather stern. "Wilfred," said Gardener Jim, "don't you be a 'tarnal fool." Wilfred said nothing, but immediately, he could not tell why, he seemed to be looking upon a picture of Annie standing among the flowers in her little plain dress. His heart was beating faster, and he said to himself that, after all, it would be sort of nice if Annie would come home. Gardener Jim was speaking laboriously, as if he dragged out conclusions he had perhaps reached long ago and had not yet compared with any one. "There's a time for everything. There's a time to graft a tree an' a time to cut it down. Well, it's your time o' life to make a 'tarnal fool o' yourself. Don't ye do it. If you do, like 's not when you're my age you'll be all soul alone, like me, an' goin' round 'tendin' to other folks's gardins." Wilfred stared at him in wonder. "I don't know," he found himself saying. "I might fix it, but I guess 'twould be kind o' queer." Gardener Jim screwed up his face until his eyes were quite eclipsed. "Queer!" said he. "Nothin' 's queer if you go ahead an' do it an' say nothin' to nobody. What if they do call ye crazed? That's another way to make 'em stan' from under an' let ye go it. There! I've said my say. Ain't that your axe over there by the well? You take it an' come along o' me. I'd ha' brought mine, only I thought mebbe I shouldn't need it till to-morrer. But I guess I shall. I guess I shall." Wilfred followed him along the road to the Miller house, and there they saw the twins. Sophy, obscured by a sun-bonnet, was on her knees, sowing seeds in a bed Jim had made for her the day before; but Eliza stood quite still among the peonies, looking off down the road.