Out in the garden, the Piper was attending to his belated planting. He had cleared the entire place, repaired the wall, and made flower-beds in fantastic shapes that pleased his own fancy. To-day, he was putting in the seeds, while Laddie played about his feet, and Miss Evelina stood by, timidly watchful.
"I do not see," she said, "why you take so much trouble to make me a garden. Nobody was ever so good to me before."
The Piper laughed and paused a moment to wipe his ruddy face. "Did nobody ever care before whether or not you had a garden?"
"Never," returned Evelina, sadly.
"Then 't is time some one did, so Laddie and I have come to make it for you, but I'm thinking 't is largely for ourselves, too, since the doing is the best part of anything."
Miss Evelina made no answer. Speech did not come easily to her after twenty-five years of habitual repression.
"'T will be a brave garden," continued the Piper, cheerily. "Marigolds and larkspur and mignonette; phlox and lad's love, rosemary, lavender, and verbena, and many another that you'll not guess till the time comes for blossoming."
"Lad's love grew in my garden once," sighed Evelina, after a little. "It was sweet while it lasted--oh, but it was sweet!"
She spoke so passionately that the Piper gathered the underlying significance of her words.
"You're speaking of another garden, I think," he ventured; "the garden in your heart. "'T is meet that lad's love should grow there. Are you sure 't was not a weed?"
"Yes, it was a weed," she replied, bitterly. "The mistake was mine."
The Piper leaned on his rake thoughtfully. "'T is hard, I think," he said, "for us to see that the mistakes are all ours. The Gardener plants rightly, but we are never satisfied. When sweet herbs are meant for us, we ask for roses, and 't is not every garden in which a rose will bloom. If we could keep it clean of weeds, and make it free of all anger and distrust, there'd be heartsease there instead of thorns."
"Heartsease?" asked Evelina, piteously. "I thought there was no more!"
"Lady," said the Piper, "there is heartsease for the asking. I'm thinking 't is you who have spoiled your garden."
"No!" cried Evelina. "Believe me, it was not I!"
"Who else?" queried the Piper, with a look which made her shrink farther back into the shelter of her chiffon. "Ah, I was not asking a question that needed an answer; I do not concern myself with names and things. But ask this of yourself--is there sin on your soul?"