Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1882-01-25
LOVE AMONG THE MARlG0lDS
OR,
THE LOVERS QUARREL.

Miss Tillie, Miss Tillie"
Yes
He's an old bachelor, Susan Kito
says
Mercy on us Kizzy Jones Who's
on old bachelorT
Miss Tille Bell, who had been medi-
tating deeply us to whether Scarlet
orange or green would DO best to be-
gin with in working q motto, had evil
IDENTIFY not paid due heed to the opening
remarks of her housemaid.
Kizzy gave her broom II flourish anu
replied to her mistress question.
sThc Teller that's took the cottage
back yondcr on the hill ! don
reckon he's very young. He's kinder
gray but not very, jest lcetlc grain
an what do you think he's been a.
dom all the mornin'y'
sGoonness me, Keziah, how should
knowY
Been a-plantn' marigolds in his
front yard all the blessed mornin' -
Bought whole lot of packages of Seed
Susan said, every one marisolds.'
Dear me, what n funny man J said
Miss Bell.
But as Kizzy hung up the broom and
disappeared the large cardboard motto
slid on to the floor on the side OF hei
and the skcins of worstcd on the other
all in tanglc of vivid color, and Miss
Tillie forgot them, forgot the present
entirely, and sat with her hands folded
and her soft eyes looking out to the
line of hills across the fields.
1t was the word 'marigolds' that hac
sent her thoughts wandering, so otter
will one simple word waken whole
train of recollections.
There was sadness mingled will
these freshly-stirred rcmembrances-'
sadness that had come to her through
her first and only romance. Now she
was pretty and pink and plump. Their
she was slender and pale; and Joe
Clifford had seen the wide world in hel
eyes, and there had been promises and
an engagement ring, and little brown
cottage bought back on the hill, with Q
funny, straggly, red-bud tree in a cor
ner of the bit of front yard, and Tillie
who had very little money of her own
in those days, invested three-pence in
paper of marigold seed to beautify the
yard.
For she said, 'marigolds are sucl
a hearty, jolly kind of flowers. There
is so much satisfaction in them
But just as they had come up ant
began to bloom in huge brilliant masses
of golden-yellow and velvet-soft red
brown, three weeks before the weddin!
day, what was it took all the light on
of them-all the suggestive beauty ont
sweetness out of the brown cottage!
What but horrible quarrel with Jo
"a quarrel in which they had boil
acted with the wisdom and common
sense of a couple Of bslligerent childre1
fighting over something as important a
rag doll, and breathing threat
against each other.
And Joe had wound it all up b
repairing to the brown cottage in
terrible temper and pulling up ever
marigold by the roots, throwing ther
spitefully across the street as nea
Titles home as possible, where the
lay, heap of bright color fading an
whiting in the sun.
If a straight slim little figure, in
gray dress, trying to look as much lik
a shadow as possible, had slipped o,
of the house in the faint light of
crescent moon and gathered up Oh
little velvet-red marigold from the hea
moist with dew, and if that marigolt
all dead and dry was in one of Mis
Titles boxes upstairs now, why, Il
one but Tillie had any suspicion of it.
And Joe had sold the cottage an
gone away.
And he can stay away while I'll
world lasts, for all of me- Tillie ha
said, remembering how he had Gale