Her hat was hanging on her shoulders, and the sun giving her cheeks a healthy color; she was humming to herself like a bee as her fingers flew, and once she paused, shaded her eyes with her hand, and took a long look at a figure down in the meadow; then she worked on silent and smiling,—a pleasant creature to see, though her hair was ruffled by the wind; her gingham gown pinned up; and her fingers deeply stained with the blood of many berries. “I wonder if that means anything?” thought Mr. Power, with a keen glance from the distant man to the busy woman close at hand. “It might be a helpful, happy thing for both, if poor David only could forget.” He had time for no more castle-building, for a startled robin flew away with a shrill chirp, and Christie looked up. “Oh, I’m so glad!” she said, rising quickly. “I was picking a special box for you, and now you can have a feast beside, just as you like it, fresh from the vines. Sit here, please, and I’ll hull faster than you can eat.” “This is luxury!” and Mr. Power sat down on the three-legged stool offered him, with a rhubarb leaf on his knee which Christie kept supplying with delicious mouthfuls. [Illustration: MR. POWER AND CHRISTIE IN THE STRAWBERRY BED.] “Well, and how goes it? Are we still happy and contented here?” he asked. “I feel as if I had been born again; as if this was a new heaven and a new earth, and every thing was as it should be,” answered Christie, with a look of perfect satisfaction in her face. “That’s a pleasant hearing. Mrs. Sterling has been praising you, but I wanted to be sure you were as satisfied as she. And how does David wear? well, I hope.” “Oh, yes, he is very good to me, and is teaching me to be a gardener, so that I needn’t kill myself with sewing any more. Much of this is fine work for women, and so healthy. Don’t I look a different creature from the ghost that came here three or four mouths ago?” and she turned her face for inspection like a child. “Yes, David is a good gardener. I often send my sort of plants here, and he always makes them grow and blossom sooner or later,” answered Mr. Power, regarding her like a beneficent genie on a three-legged stool. “You are the fresh air, and Mrs. Sterling is the quiet sunshine that does the work, I fancy. David only digs about the roots.” “Thank you for my share of the compliment; but why say ‘only digs’? That is a most important part of the work: I’m afraid you don’t appreciate David.” “Oh, yes, I do; but he rather aggravates me sometimes,” said Christie, laughing, as she put a particularly big berry in the green plate to atone for her frankness. “How?” asked Mr. Power, interested in these little revelations. “Well, he won’t be ambitious. I try to stir him up, for he has talents; I’ve found that out: but he won’t seem to care for any thing but watching over his mother, reading his old books, and making flowers bloom double when they ought to be single.”