"At The Briers? Peter?" I gasped.

"Even at that humble abode, Betty, whose latch-string is always out to
friends," answered Sam. And I felt his arm stiffen under my fingers in a
way for which I could see no reason.

"Just as I was going to begin my garden," I wailed. And Sam's stiff arm
limbered again and made a motion toward my hair that I dodged. "What
does he want?"

"Direct life. I can give it to him," answered Sam. "At least that is
what he asked for in his letter to me. I don't know what he will request
in the one I wager you get by the morning mail."

"Why, I had been writing him all that he needed of that, and we are
going to be so busy gardening, how can we help him live it also? Peter
does require so much affectionate attention." I positively wailed this
to Sam, in the most ungenerous spirit.

"Betty dear," said Sam, gently, as he puffed at a little brier which he
had substituted for the adorable cob on account of the formality of
Sue's dance, which we could hear going on comfortably without us, beyond
the privet hedge whose buds were just beginning to give forth a
delicious tang, "Peter is a great, queer kind of sensitive plant that it
may be we will have to help cultivate. You know that for several years
his poems have really got across in great style with the writing world,
and I'm proud of him and--I--I--well, I love him. Suppose, just suppose,
dear, that Keats had had a great hulking farmer like me to stand by.
Don't you think that maybe the world would have had some grown-man stuff
from him that would have counted? I always have thought of that when I