Anastasia seemed consumed with a desire for a dish of gossip, but was not willing to take the initiative.  She chuckled to herself and tried several perfectly transparent ways of attracting my attention, until I took pity on her, a very one-sided pity too, for, between ourselves, Anastasia is the domestic salt and pepper that gives the Garden Vacation a flavour that I should sadly miss.

“Miss Marie,” she exclaimed, “do be the tastiest creaytur ever I set me eyes on.” (She refused absolutely to call her Maria; that name, she holds, is only fit for a settled old maid, “and that same it’s not sure and fair to mark any woman wid being this side the grave.”)

Then I knew that I only had to sit down and raise my eyes to Anastasia’s face in an attitude of attention, to open the word gates, and this I did.

“Well, fust off win she got the invite ter sing at the swarry that tops off the day’s doings down to that Golf Club, she was that worried about hats you never seen the like!  She wus over ter Bridgeton, and Barney swore he drove her ter every milliner in the place, and says she ter me, pleasant like, that evenin’, when returned, in excuse fer havin’ nothin’ to show, ’Oh, Annie, Annie, it would break yer heart to see the little whisp of flowers they ask five dollars for; to fix me hats a trifle would part me from a tin-dollar bill!’”

(The sentiments I at once perceived might be Maria’s, but their translation Anastasia’s.)

“Now Miss Marie, she’s savin’ like,—­not through meanness, but because she’s got the good Irish heart that boils against payin’ rint, and she’s hoardin’ crown by shillin’ till she kin buy her a cabin and to say a pertaty patch for a garden, somewhere out where it’s green!  Faith! but she’ll do it too; she’s a manager!  Yez had orter see the illigant boned turkey she made out o’ veal, stuck through with shrivelled black ground apples, she called ‘puffles’! an glued it up foine wid jelly.  Sez I, ‘They’ll never know the difference,’ but off she goes and lets it out and tells the makin’ uv it ter every woman on the hill,—­that’s all I hev agin her.  She’s got a disease o’ truth-telling when there’s no need that would anguish the saints o’ Hiven theirselves!

“’I kin make better ‘n naturaler-lookin’ hats fer nothin’, here at home, than they keep in N’ York,’ she says after looking out the back window a piece.  ‘And who’ll help yer?’ says I, ’and where’ll yer git the posies and what all?’

“‘I bought some bolts o’ ribbon to-day,’ says she, smilin’; ’and fer the rest, the garden, you, and I will manage it together, if you’ll lend me a shelf all to meself in the cold closet whenever I need it!’ Sure fer a moment I wuz oneasy, fer I thought a wild streak run branchin’ through all the boss’s family!”

(At the words Garden, You, and I, there flashed through me the thought of some telepathic influence at work.)

“‘The garden’s full o’ growin’ posies that outshames the flower-makers; watch out and see, Anastasia!’