“At The Briers?  Peter?” I gasped.

“Even at that humble abode, Betty, whose latch-string is always out to friends,” answered Sam.  And I felt his arm stiffen under my fingers in a way for which I could see no reason.

“Just as I was going to begin my garden,” I wailed.  And Sam’s stiff arm limbered again and made a motion toward my hair that I dodged.  “What does he want?”

“Direct life.  I can give it to him,” answered Sam.  “At least that is what he asked for in his letter to me.  I don’t know what he will request in the one I wager you get by the morning mail.”

“Why, I had been writing him all that he needed of that, and we are going to be so busy gardening, how can we help him live it also?  Peter does require so much affectionate attention.”  I positively wailed this to Sam, in the most ungenerous spirit.

“Betty dear,” said Sam, gently, as he puffed at a little brier which he had substituted for the adorable cob on account of the formality of Sue’s dance, which we could hear going on comfortably without us, beyond the privet hedge whose buds were just beginning to give forth a delicious tang, “Peter is a great, queer kind of sensitive plant that it may be we will have to help cultivate.  You know that for several years his poems have really got across in great style with the writing world, and I’m proud of him and—­I—­I—­well, I love him.  Suppose, just suppose, dear, that Keats had had a great hulking farmer like me to stand by.  Don’t you think that maybe the world would have had some grown-man stuff from him that would have counted?  I always have thought of that when I looked at old Pete and promised myself to back him up with my brawn and nerve when he needed it.  Why, in the ’13 game it was Pete’s flaming face up on the corner of the stadium that put the ginger in me to carry across as I did.  Yes, I am going to put Pete’s hand to my plow and his legs under old Buttercup at milking-time if it kills us both, if that is what he needs or you have made him think he needs.”

“Oh, Sam, I’m ashamed!  I’m ashamed of not wanting precious Peter in my garden.  He can have half of all of it.  You know I love him dearly.  I’ll work all day with him and attend to all his blisters and get everybody to give him work and help him.”

“Well, I don’t believe I’d do all that to him, Betty,” answered Sam, with a laugh.  Then his eyes glinted past mine for a second.  “And say, Betty, you know my blisters are kind of—­kind of old friends to you; Pete’s might not have so many—­many landmarks for you to work by,” he added, as he knocked the ashes carefully out of the brier and picked up his hat.  “Let’s go for one fox, and then I’ll trot on out to my patch.”

“I’ll get Tolly to run you out in Redwheels while I do my promised dances, and then I’ll be out early in the morning to help plan about Peter.  And—­and, Sam, do you want to—­to give me that garden?”

“Everything that is is yours, Bettykin,” he answered as we went down the steps out on to the springy greening grass and across to the back gate.