Beyond the palace began the Community garden, a large square in the centre of the village filled with flowers and fruit adorned with arbors and cedar-trees clipped in the form of birds, and enriched with an old-style greenhouse whose sliding glasses were viewed with admiration by the visitors of thirty years ago, who sent their choice plants thither from far and near to be tended through the long, cold lake-country winters. The garden, the cedars, and the greenhouse were all antiquated, but to me none the less charming. The spring that gushed up in one corner, the old-fashioned flowers in their box-bordered beds, larkspur, lady slippers, bachelor's buttons, peonies, aromatic pinks, and all varieties of roses, the arbors with red honeysuckle overhead and tan bark under foot, were all delightful; and I knew, also, that I should find the gardener's daughter at her never-ending task of weeding. This time it was the strawberry bed. 'I have come to sit in your pleasant garden, Mina,' I said, taking a seat on a shaded bench near the bending figure. 'So?' said Wilhelmina in long-drawn interrogation, glancing up shyly with a smile. She was a child of the sun, this little maiden, and while her blond companions wore always their bonnets or broad-brimmed hats over their precise caps, Wilhelmina, as now, constantly discarded these coverings and sat in the sun basking like a bird of the tropics. In truth, it did not redden her; she was one of those whose coloring comes not from without, but within. 'Do you like this work, Mina?' 'O--so. Good as any.' 'Do you like work?' 'Folks must work.' This was, said gravely, as part of the Community creed. 'Wouldn't you like to go with me to the city?' 'No; I's better here.' 'But you can see the great world, Mina. You need not work, I will take care of you. You shall have pretty dresses; wouldn't you like that?' I asked, curious to discover the secret of the Separatist indifference to everything outside. 'Nein,' answered the little maiden, tranquilly; 'nein, fräulein. Ich bin zufrieden.' Those three words were the key. 'I am contented.' So were they taught from childhood, and--I was about to say--they knew no better; but, after all, is there anything better to know?