"This is our last talk. Some of you already have started your early
vegetables and flowers. Instead of one coldframe we have four in our
family and one belongs to a girl.

"It is going to be a better year of gardening than before. Leston is
with us now. Another season there will be others. The school grounds
look well, and if you have noticed the entire village looks a little
better than ever before.

"We will shake hands all around. In a few weeks we shall have hands
quite dirty with good old garden soil. You may take your stools and
benches off with you, or leave them all here."

"We shall leave them," said Eloise; "for I am coming back often to sit
on my little cricket right on your hearth."

"I am a little large for a cricket," went on Albert; "but I'd not quit
this hearthstone, so my stool stays."

"And mine, too," each one added.

Off they trooped again, some down the country road, some up the road,
others across the fields, and George, as usual, on his old horse. They
shouted until out of sight.

"The best things in the world," the man murmured as he stepped out into
the open and drew into his lungs deep breaths of the fresh spring air.