Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples¹. Luxuriant hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts², hanging their delicate clusters here and there in graceful³ profusion⁴. Woodbine transformed the old shed and tool house to things of beauty, and the flower beds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant⁵ in all the countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden spot,—dahlias scarlet⁶, gold, and variegated⁷. In the very centre was a round plot where the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their leaves, and in the four corners were triangular⁸ blocks of sweet phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds, and clove⁹ pinks.