It was while making a little journey to the back porch for milk and cream that the housekeeper first wavered in her swift routine.  Below the back steps lay a little city garden, so lovely in the strengthening March sunlight that she must set her bottles down on the step, and run down for a whiff of the fragrance of climbing roses, just beginning to bloom, of bridal-wreath and white lilac.  Cobwebs, caught from bush to wet bush, sparkled with jewels; a band of brown sparrows flew away from a dripping faucet, and a black cat, crouching on the crosspieces of the low fence, rose, yawned, and vanished silently.  The wall was almost entirely hidden by vines, principally rose vines, which flung long arms in the air.  Presently a woman in the next yard parted these vines, to look over and say pleasantly: 

“Good-mornin’, Mis’ Studdiford!  I’s just looking over an’ Dee-spairin’ of ever gettin’ my backyard to look like yours!  It does smell like one big bo’quet mornin’s like this!”

“Oh, well, there are so many of us to fuss with it,” said the young woman addressed, cheerfully.  “My aunt and my cousins are nearly as crazy about flowers as I am, and the other day—­that warm day, you know, when we had my mother out here—­she was just as absorbed as the rest of us!” She put a friendly head over the wall.  “But I don’t see what you’ve got to complain of, Mrs. Calhoun,” said she, “especially as you’re just beginning!  I see your geraniums all took hold!”

“Every one but the white Lady Washington,” the woman said.  “How is your mother?” she added.

“Pretty comfortable, thank you!” said the other.  “I imagine she may have had a restless night, for both she and my aunt seem to be asleep, so I’m getting breakfast for my cousins and uncle myself!  And I’m not supposed to be out here at all!” she added, with a farewell laugh and nod, as she turned back to the steps.  “But I just couldn’t resist the garden!”

She picked up the milk bottles and reentered the kitchen just as a trimly dressed young woman came into it from the hall.  The newcomer was tall, and if not quite pretty was at least a fresh-looking, pleasant-faced girl.  She wore a tailor-made skirt and white shirt waist, and a round hat covered with flowers, and laid her jacket over the back of a chair.

“Julie, where’s Ma?” said she, in surprise.  “Have you been doing everything?”

“Not everything!” Julia smiled.  “But Aunt May must have overslept herself; there hasn’t been a sound from their room this morning.  Your suit looks lovely,” she added admiringly.

“Oh, do you think so?” asked the younger woman eagerly.  She interrupted her task of putting plates and cups on the table, to come close and turn toward Julia the back of her head for inspection.  “Like it?” asked she.

Julia seriously inspected the rhinestone comb that glittered there.

“Why, I don’t utterly dislike it,” she said, in her pleasant voice.