"I hope so. Whatever I called him, he's it. Come over." He led me to the orchard edge, and there in the half light I saw a line of stubs and a pile of brush. "Not your quince bushes!" I gasped. "Just that," he said, grimly, and then burst into further unprintable phrases descriptive of the city-bred loafer. "If I ever give work to a hobo again, I'll be--" "Sh-h-h," I said; and I could not forbear adding, "Now you know how I have felt about those huckleberry bushes and birches and things, only I hadn't the language to express it." "You have language enough," said Jonathan. Undoubtedly Jonathan was depressed. I had been depressed for some time on account of the grooming of my berry patches and fence lines, but now I found myself growing suddenly cheerful. I do not habitually batten on the sorrow of others, but this was a special case. For how could I be blind to the fact that chance had thrust a weapon into my hand? I knew that hereafter, at critical moments, I need only murmur "quince bushes" and discussion would die out. It made me feel very gentle towards Jonathan, to be thus armed against him. Gentle, but also cheerful. "Jonathan," I said, "it's no use standing here. Come back to the log where I was sitting." He came, with heavy tread. We sat down, and looked out over the twinkling swamp. The hay had just been cut, and the air was richly fragrant. The hush of night encompassed us, yet the darkness was full of life. Crickets chirruped steadily in the orchard behind us. From a distant meadow the purring whistle of the whip-poor-will sounded in continuous cadence, like a monotonous and gentle lullaby. The woods beyond the open swamp, a shadowy blur against the sky, were still, except for a sleepy note now and then from some bird half-awakened. Once a wood thrush sang his daytime song all through, and murmured part of it a second time, then sank into silence. "Jonathan," I said at last, "the farm is rather a good place to be." "Not bad." "Let's not groom it too much. Let's not make it too shipshape. After all, you know, it isn't really a ship." "Nor yet a woodchuck, I hope," said Jonathan. And I was content not to press the matter. VIII "Escaped from Old Gardens" In the days when I deemed it necessary to hunt down in my well-thumbed Gray every flower of wood and field, and fit it to its Latin name, I used often to meet this phrase. At first, being young, I resented it. I scorned gardens: their carefully planned and duly tended splendors were not for me. The orchid in the deep woods or by the edge of the lonely swamp, the rare and long-sought heather in the open moorland, these it was that roused my ardor. And to find that some newly discovered flower was not a wild flower at all, but merely a garden flower "escaped"! The very word carried a hint of reprobation.