The truth was that Freelove Keith had taken it upon himself to tend Lydia’s garden, which was but a small one, and she thought with spiteful delight how, when he came again, if he came at all, he would find some of the work done, and wonder. But it did not fall out as she had planned, for presently she heard loud voices out in the garden, and peering around the corner of the porch, she saw Freelove and Abel, each with a bundle of brush. Lydia gathered up her work hastily, and fled into the house. She went up to the south chamber, and peeped around the curtain. Both of her lovers were sticking the pease, Abel awkwardly, with trembling haste, and Freelove with a sturdy vehemence that might have suited Cadmus sowing the dragon’s teeth. Just then there was a sullen quiet, but presently arose another altercation. Lydia spied a long rent in the skirt of Abel’s fine coat. Soon Abel started towards the house, and she sat down on the floor of the south chamber and laughed. She heard a faint voice below calling her, but she did not reply, and Abel dared not search for her in the house. Lydia peered out again, and saw Freelove at work alone in the garden, but he never once glanced up at the house. She saw Sarah Porter’s face, and her mother’s over her shoulder, at a window of their house across the yard, and she watched jealously lest Freelove should glance that way; but he did not. When the pease were finished, he went out of the yard, looking neither to the right nor left. Lydia went down-stairs cautiously, to be sure Abel Perkins was gone. However, when he came again, as he did soon, she greeted him kindly, and smiled sweetly by way of indirect condolence when he told how Freelove Keith had driven him from the garden. Lydia spied the rent, which his mother had neatly mended, in his broadcloth coat. “Why, Abel, you have torn your fine coat,” said she. Abel blushed. “I tore it getting the sticks for the pease. But ’tis of no account,” he said; “and I’m willing to tear it again if there is anything else you want done, Lydia.” “Maybe your mother won’t be quite so willing to mend it again,” said Lydia. But presently she brought out the churn, and set Abel Perkins, in his fine clothes, churning cream out on the porch. Sarah Porter called her mother out into their front yard to see, and Freelove Keith went by; he went often to see his Aunt Nabby.