We used to walk down to see them every morning after breakfast, when Stella watered them, dipping the water from the pool and sending Antony and Cleopatra scurrying. Antony and Cleopatra were the goldfish which the Eckstroms, true to their promise, had sent us. The poor things were unnamed when they arrived, but their aspect--the one dark and sinuous, the other pompously golden--betrayed their identity. Stella called a few days after their arrival, to convey our thanks--carefully waiting till she saw the Eckstroms driving out in their car! Their curiosity having been satisfied regarding us, and our thanks having been rendered to them, further intercourse lapsed. We have never tried to maintain relations with those of our neighbours who bore us, or with whom we have nothing in common. Life is too short. Not only did Stella water the seedlings religiously, but she kept the soil mulched and the weeds out, working with her gloved hands in the earth. All the seeds came up well save the phlox, with which we had small luck, and the _Papaver Orientalis_, with which we had no luck at all. Not a seed came up, and not a seed ever has come up in our soil. We have had to beg the plants from other people. Even as the gardener predicted, the tender little larkspur plants mysteriously died. We ringed them with stiff paper, we surrounded them with coal ashes, we even sprayed them with Bordeaux and arsenate of lead. But still they were devoured at the roots or the tops, or mysteriously gave up the ghost with no apparent cause. We started with two hundred, and when autumn came we had just thirty left. "Still," said Stella cheerfully, "thirty will make quite a brave show." "If they survive the winter," said I gloomily. "I've not the patience to be a gardener." "It _is_ a good deal like reform!" Stella replied. As the busy autumn days came upon us, Twin Fires took on a new aspect, and one to us greenhorns indescribably thrilling. In the first place, our field of corn rustled perpetually as we walked past it, and down in the greenish-golden lanes beneath we could see the orange gleam of pungkins (I shall so spell the word lest it be mispronounced by the ignorant). Great ears of the Stowell's evergreen were ripe, for Mike's prediction about the early frost had not come true, and we ate the succulent food clean to the cob every day at dinner, besides selling many dozens of ears to the market. In the long light of afternoon, Stella loved to go along the path by the hayfield wall and then turn in amid the corn, losing sight at once of all the universe and wandering in a new world of rustling leaves. She felt, she said, just as Alice must have felt after she had eaten the cake; and once a rabbit bounded across her foot, to her unspeakable delight. She looked to see if he had dropped his gloves! Then there was the potato field. We were eating our own new potatoes now. Often Stella dug them.