"I will, Sam, I _will_ have that garden," I said, with the same angry
determination in my voice I had used when I had clung to him and kicked
and fought to go to places with him when he didn't want me, and when my
skirts were several inches above my bare knees and his feet were
scratched and innocent of shoes.

"Betty," said Sam, as he shook me away from him and then took my
shoulders under their thin covering of chiffon in his plow-calloused,
big, warm hands, "forget it! There are lots of dream gardens out in the
world you can play in when you have time away from the bright lights.
Everybody grows 'em without a lick of work. I have to work mine or
starve. Good night!" Then with a rough of my hair down across my eyes he
was out in the moonlit road, running away from me to his hollow log in a
way he had never done before, no matter how I had tagged him.

I ran as far as the gate to watch him out of sight, and then I put my
head down against the tall old post that had been one of Sam's perches
when he wanted to climb away from me in former years, and sobbed and
sobbed. I had never expected Sam to cast me off.

Girls' hearts are covered all over with little thin crystallizations of
affection, and men ought to be very careful not to smash any of them
with their superior strength. Sam had hurt me so that I didn't even dare
think about it. I knew he was poor, and I hadn't expected him to plow
and plant things for me while I went about in a picture-hat snipping
them with garden scissors. I had asked him to let me set onions and weed
beans and drop peas and corn for him and share his poverty and hard work
as a true friend, and he had shut his cedar-pole gate in my face and
heart. And I didn't understand why. I tried to think it was his