Aunt Augusta insists that the only thing to do is to get up with the
first crack of dawn and carefully search out each slug, remove it and
destroy it. She says if this is done for a week they will be
exterminated.

I carefully explained it all to Jasper and when I came down to breakfast
he was coming in with three queer green things, also with an injured air
of having been kept up all night. I didn't feel equal to making him go
on with the combat and ignored the question for two days until I saw all
the buds on my largest Neron done for in one night.

I have always been able to get up at the break of day to go
sketching--it was at daybreak that I made my sketch in the Defleury
gardens that captured the French art eye enough to get me my Salon
mention. If I could get up to splash water-colors at that hour, I surely
could rush to the protection of my own roses, so I went to bed with gray
dawn on my mind and the shutters wide open so the first light would get
full in my eyes.

I am glad that it was a good bright ray that woke me and partly dazzled
me, for the sight I had, after I had been kneeling down in the rose bed
for fifteen minutes, was something of a shock to me, though no reason in
the world why it should have been. I can't remember that I ever
speculated as to whether the Crag wore pajamas or not, and I don't see
that I should have been surprised that he did instead of the night shirt
of our common ancestry.

He came around the side of the house out of the sun-shot mist and was
half way down the garden path before I saw him or he saw me, and I must