EVELINA'S GARDEN

by

MARY E. WILKINS







New York and London
Harper & Brothers
MDCCCXCIX





On the south a high arbor-vitae hedge separated Evelina's garden from
the road. The hedge was so high that when the school-children lagged
by, and the secrets behind it fired them with more curiosity than
those between their battered book covers, the tallest of them by
stretching up on tiptoe could not peer over. And so they were driven
to childish engineering feats, and would set to work and pick away
sprigs of the arbor-vitae with their little fingers, and make
peep-holes--but small ones, that Evelina might not discern them. Then
they would thrust their pink faces into the hedge, and the enduring
fragrance of it would come to their nostrils like a gust of aromatic