These dispensed their sweet odors so generously that it was a favorite diversion among the village children to stand in rows outside the fence, and, elevating their bucolic noses, simultaneously "sniff Miss Cummins' peas." The garden was large enough to have little hills and dales of its own, and its banks sloped gently down to the river. There was a gnarled apple tree hidden by a luxuriant wild grapevine, a fit bower for a "lov'd Celia" or a "fair Rosamond." There was a spring, whose crystal waters were "cabined, cribbed, confined" within a barrel sunk in the earth; a brook singing its way among the alder bushes, and dripping here and there into pools, over which the blue harebells leaned to see themselves. There was a summer-house, too, on the brink of the hill; a weather-stained affair, with a hundred names carved on its venerable lattices,--names of youths and maidens who had stood there in the moonlight and plighted rustic vows. If you care to feel a warm glow in the region of your heart, imagine little Timothy Jessup sent to play in that garden,--sent to play for almost the first time in his life! Imagine it, I ask, for there are some things too sweet to prick with a pen-point. Timothy stayed there fifteen minutes, and running back to the house in a state of intoxicated delight went up to Samantha, and laying an insistent hand on hers said excitedly, "Oh, Samanthy, you didn't tell me--there is shining water down in the garden; not so big as the ocean, nor so still as the harbor, but a kind of baby river running along by itself with the sweetest noise. Please, Miss Vilda, may I take Gay to see it, and will it hurt it if I wash Rags in it?" "Let 'em all go," suggested Samantha; "there's Jabe dawdlin' along the road, and they might as well be out from under foot." "Don't be too hard on Jabe this morning, Samanthy,--he's been to see the Baptist minister at Edgewood; you know he's going to be baptized some time next month." "Well, he needs it! But land sakes! you couldn't make them Slocums pious 'f you kep' on baptizin' of 'em till the crack o' doom. I never hearn tell of a Slocum's gittin' baptized in July. They allers take 'em after the freshets in the spring o' the year, 'n' then they have to be turrible careful to douse 'em lengthways of the river. Look at him, will ye? I b'lieve he's grown sence yesterday! If he'd ever stood stiff on his feet when he was a boy, he needn't 'a' been so everlastin' tall; but he was forever roostin' on fences' with his laigs danglin', 'n' the heft of his feet stretched 'em out,--it couldn't do no dif'rent. I ain't got no patience with him." "Jabe has considerable many good points," said Miss Cummins loyally; "he's faithful,--you always know where to find him."