Mike shook his head. "There's some things, like peas, ye can't get in too soon," he said, "and some like termaters and cauliflowers that ye got to start under glass; but up here in these mountains, with the frosts comin' and the cold nights, ye don't know when, ye can wait till the middle o' May and dump on the manure and get yer crop with the next man." "Well, I'm trusting you," said I. "But next year we'll start earlier, just the same. I don't want to be with the next man. I want to beat him. I don't see why that isn't what a farmer should do as well as a merchant." "Sure, it is," said Mike, "only the God almighty don't like it, and sinds frosts down upon yer presoomin'." "You talk like a Calvinist," I laughed. "Sure, I dunno what that is," Mike replied. "How much of this last plantin' of corn shall I put in? It's Stowell's Evergreen. Maybe it's the frosts will get it all, come September." "We'll take a chance," said I. "I'm a gambler. Put in all you've got room for." "Yes, sor," said he, "and it's pea brush we'll be needin' soon for them early peas I planted late. Is it Joe I shall sind to cut some in the pasture lot behind the barn?" I hadn't thought of my ten-acre pasture across the road. In fact, I had scarcely been in it. "What's there to cut?" I asked. "Poverty birch," said Mike. "Sure, it's walkin' up from the brook like it was a weed, which it are, and eatin' the good grass up. The pasture will be better for it out." "Cut away, then," said I. "But, mind you, no other trees!" I went back to my sundial, between two rows of cauliflower plants Bert had given to me, and which Mike had set out thus early for an experiment, between threads of sprouting radishes, lines of onion sets, and other succulent evidences of the season to come. As I started to mark out the beds around the pedestal, I found myself wishing Miss Goodwin were there to advise me. I made a few marks on the ground, surveyed the pattern, didn't like it, could think of nothing better, and resolved to await her return. I took a few steps toward the house. Then I stopped. "No, you fool," I said to myself. "This is your house. You are going to live in it. If you can't plan it yourself, you'd better go back to teaching." I returned to the dial and went to work again. She had suggested a ring of low flowers, and some taller ones, irregularly set. I measured off a six-foot circle about the pedestal, as the inner ring of the beds, and left four breaks in it, to the four cardinal points of the compass, where the turf or paths could come in to the dial. Then I extended the sides of these four beds on the straight axes of the paths for three feet, and made the rear sides not on the regular arc of the inner edges, but full of irregularities, almost of bulges, where I would set clumps of tall flowers. "She'll like that, I guess," I reflected, and then caught myself at it, and grinned rather sheepishly.