of the creek, and on the bank a carpet was formed by golden-yellow,
creeping buttercups.

In the side yard grew two great clumps of iris, or, as it is more
commonly called, "Blue Flag." Its blossoms, dainty as rare orchids,
with lily-like, violet-veined petals of palest-tinted mauve and
purple.

On the sunny side of the old farm house, facing the East, where at
early morn the sun shone bright and warm, grew Aunt Sarah's pansies,
with velvety, red-brown petals, golden-yellow and dark purple. They
were truly "Heart's Ease," gathered with a lavish hand, and sent as
gifts to friends who were ill. The more she picked the faster they
multiplied, and came to many a sick bed "sweet messengers of Spring."

If Aunt Sarah had a preference for one particular flower, 'twas the
rose, and they well repaid the time and care she lavished on them. She
had pale-tinted blush roses, with hearts of deepest pink; rockland and
prairie and hundred-leaf roses, pink and crimson ramblers, but the
most highly-prized roses of her collection were an exquisite, deep
salmon-colored "Marquis De Sinety" and an old-fashioned pink moss
rose, which grew beside a large bush of mock-orange, the creamy
blossoms of the latter almost as fragrant as real orange blossoms of
the sunny Southland. Not far distant, planted in a small bed by
themselves, grew old-fashioned, sweet-scented, double petunias,
ragged, ripple, ruffled corollas of white, with splotches of brilliant
crimson and purple, their slender stems scarcely strong enough to
support the heavy blossoms.

In one of the sunniest spots in the old garden grew Aunt Sarah's