The Press., 1918-12-26
Winter.Killing of the Hedge
 @"
 4y JANE OSBORNE
Copyright, 1918. by the Mcclure Newspa-
 per Syndicate.)

DO doubt, to "the year the hedges win l ter-killed." Perhaps by that time l there will be a little uncertainty in l the minds of some as to just which l Good Friday it was that the United States "got into the war;" and just how 1 long that war lasted. They will have | forgotten that old Peter COnkling- RosevAles millionaire-dIdn't sub | scribe a cent to the Liberty loan and l that Judge Robert Pritchard subscrib- 1 ed ten thousand, and that somebody's neighhOr probably poisoned some hOdy's cat and that the doctors widow had set her cap most openly for said Peter COnklin, All these things will have been forgotten forty years from now, hut not the winter-kllling of the hedge. That Is the sort of landmark in the flight of time that we somehow always remember even when we for get affairs of larger or more personal interest. Ut was the cOldest winter on record" some octogenarians will say, "und I remember how the hedge twelve feet high that had been growing ten or dozen years between Judge Pritchard's place and the old Warden place was Winter-killed, roots and branches"
 That this particular luxurious growth of privet had been entirely blighted as the effect of the unwOnted cold weather last winter neither Judge Pritchard nor Hester Warden realized till weeks after the usual time for it's buds to be bursting under the warmth nd other ROsevalians, whose less luxuri- Ous hedges had also been blighted, had come to the realization that the only thing to do to save what life might remain in the roots of their hedges was to amputate all the dead branches above, that Hester on her side of the thick network of dead twigs and branches and Judge Robert Pritchard, hidden on his side, realized one warm spring evening that the old hedge would have to go, The hedge had been planted on the Warden side of the dividing line, so 1t was obvious ly up to Hester to have it cut down, al- though its branches had long since spread many feet over into the Prltch- ard domain. Hester hesitated several days after she had purchased the last pair of hedge-clips in the ROsevale hardware store before giving her order to the gardener-by-the-day to begin the amputatiOn. It seemed like desecra- tiOn to her; she could not make it seem other than unloyal and traitorOus to the memory of poor old Aunt Bethiah. Still Aunt Bethiah would not have 1o+ Io in was. Hester was sure of it. She planned an overnight trip to the large nearby city for the days when the cut ting down operation was to take place and, after having cast a cOntrite look at the old painting of Aunt Bethiah that still hung oyer the marble mantel- piece in the old ''frOnt parIOr," made up her mind to give the order.
 There would have to be first time in that unhedged garden, Hester as- sured herself. Even Aunt Bethiah could not object to her thirty-year-Old niece going into her own garden under the circumstances. So as soon as she had eaten her solitary dinner on the day she returned from the city she left the table and descended into the | old garden. The sun was still warm and golden and the wood thrushes somewhere in the Pritchard shrubbery were just beginning their long evening song. Hester tried not to see the change till she was actually in the garden. Then a strange sense of free dom and emancipation came over her. Already the plants and growing things in her garden had proflted by the in= crease of air and sunshine that the passing of the hedge had allowed: The col4mhines and tulips were out earlier than usual and 1t seemed to Hester as if their oolOrs were deeper and gayer than in the old days when they were hedged in by the twelve-fOOt pr1vet. And 1t was as if new world had l been opened and discovered to her when she first permitted her eyes to wander beyond the line where the privet had once been placed, over there in the fairy land of light green leaves 1 and foliage where the wood thrushes sang. She had not seen that realm for ten years, not since the day the high board fence was taken down, and in ! COuS0NuSL1CO O4 I1AdL SAS WdS AAACN away by Aunt Bethiah to be gone until the newly planted privet should have taken it's place. Could it be that all these years that fairyland of leaves and blossoms had been there just be- yond the priyet2 Hester was wonder ing.
 And then came the voice of Judge Pritchard, who must have been in his garden behind one of his lilac bushes all the time that Rhe was inspecting her own transformed domain,
 Neither Hester nor Robert said any
 thing very profound or clever or worth
 remembering that evening when they
 spoke for the first time in ten years,
 Each had known from the time they
 knew that the hedge had to go that
 their speaking would be the inevitable
 result. Perhaps that is why Hester had
 felt so especially guilty when she stood
 before old Aunt Bethiah's picture a
 few minutes before. The spell cast by
 Aunt Bethiah was entirely broken
 when Hester permitted herself to be
 urged across that old barrier on the
 excuse of looking at some especially luxurious rOSe-cOlOred cOImbineS that Judge Pritchard insisted had been vagrants from her garden and had shown themselves a season or so be- fore.
 T knew they were yours." he told her, sand thHt is why I cherished them so. had the gardener nurse them like orchids" Hester was kneeling over to touch the silky blossoms with her fin- gers. II wonder how they dared go through the hedge?" was all she could think of saying, and then her eyes and those of Robert Pritchard met and both knew that the barrier that had gone down with the hedge could never be replaced.
 After they had seated themselves on