Aunt Sarah’s sunflowers, or “Sonnen Blume,” as she liked to call them, planted along the garden fence to feed chickens and birds alike, were a sight worth seeing.  The birds generally confiscated the larger portion of seeds.  A pretty sight it was to see a flock of wild canaries, almost covering the tops of the largest sunflowers, busily engaged picking out the rich, oily seeds.

Aunt Sarah loved the golden flowers, which always appeared to be nodding to the sun, and her sunflowers were particularly fine, some being as much as fifty inches in circumference.

A bouquet of the smaller ones was usually to be seen in a quaint, old, blue-flowered, gray jar on the farm house veranda in Summertime.  Earlier in the season blossoms of the humble artichoke, which greatly resemble small sunflowers, or large yellow daisies, filled the jar.  Failing either of these, she gathered large bouquets of golden-rod or wild carrot blossoms, both of which grew in profusion along the country lanes and roadside near the farm.  But the old gray jar never held a bouquet more beautiful than the one of bright, blue “fringed gentians,” gathered by Aunt Sarah in the Fall of the year, several miles distant from the farm.

CHAPTER VI.

Mary confides in aunt Sarah and gives her views on suffrage for women.

    “There’s no deny’n women are foolish,
    God A’mighty made them to match the men.”

A short time after her arrival at the farm Mary poured into the sympathetic ear of Aunt Sarah her hopes and plans.  Her lover, Ralph Jackson, to whom she had become engaged the past Winter, held a position with the Philadelphia Electric Company, and was studying hard outside working hours.  His ambition was to become an electrical engineer.  He was getting fair wages, and wished Mary to marry him at once.  She confessed she loved Ralph too well to marry him, ignorant as she was of economical housekeeping and cooking.

Mary, early left an orphan, had studied diligently to fit herself for a kindergarten teacher, so she would be capable of earning her own living on leaving school, which accounted for her lack of knowledge of housework, cooking, etc.

Aunt Sarah, loving Mary devotedly, and knowing the young man of her choice to be clean, honest and worthy, promised to do all in her power to make their dream of happiness come true.  Learning from Mary that Ralph was thin and pale from close confinement, hard work and study, and of his intention of taking a short vacation, she determined he should spend it on the farm, where she would be able to “mother him.”