said meekly, “I am afraid I am to blame. You know Mr. Prawley does not like automobile riding—”  

 “I know nothing of the kind, Isobel,” I said. “I know I am passionately fond of gardening, and that some one has robbed me of the pleasure I have looked forward to for years: the joy of weeding my own garden on my own land.”  

 “Mr. Prawley does not like automobile riding,” continued Isobel, “and he came to me this morning and told me his health was so poor that his doctor had told him nothing but gardening could save his life. When he showed the garden to his doctor, the doctor told him he was not getting half enough gardening—that he must garden twice as much. I told Mr. Prawley he could not have your half of the garden, because you were passionately fond of it—”  

 “True, Isobel!” I said, rubbing my back at the lamest spot. 

 “But he begged on his knees, saying that while it was only a pleasure for you, it was life and health for him, and when his wife wept, I had not the heart to refuse. He said he would make a fair exchange, and that as he was an anti-vegetarian you could have all the vegetables that grew in your own half, and all that grew in his, too.”  

 “Isobel,” I said, taking her hand, “this is a great, great disappointment to me. It robs me of a pleasure of which I may say I am passionately fond, but I cannot disown a contract made by my little wife. Mr. Prawley may garden my half of the garden.”  

 I must admit that the Prawleys were ideal tenants. Not a sound came from his floor of the house. Indeed, I did not see him nor his family at all. But during my days in town he and Isobel seemed to have many conversations, and she was so tender-hearted and easily moved that one by one she let Mr. Prawley take all the outdoor work of which I may rightly claim to be passion—to be exceedingly fond. 

 Mowing the lawn is one of the things in which I delight. I ardently love pushing the lawn mower, and if, occasionally, I allowed the grass to grow rather long, it was only because I was saving the pleasure of cutting it, as a child saves the icing of its cake for the last sweet bite. I remember remarking, quite in joke, one morning, that the confounded lawn needed mowing again, and that the grass seemed to do nothing but grow, and that I'd probably have to break my back over it when I got home that evening. But when I reached home that evening I suspected that Isobel must have taken my little joke as earnest, for the lawn was nicely mown and 

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