The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-12-22
-HE frst few dans at Mockmnna

"HE first few days at Mockwood
 were spent at the little gar
 dener's cottage, from which the other youngsters had flown.
 Berber, quietly moving about the tiny rooms, sitting buried in 9 scientific book or taking long trips sefeld, was the recipient of much maternal f1attery. He accepted it all very gently; the young cultur- ist had an air of quiet cOnsidera- ton for every one and absolutely no consciousness of himself. He presumed upon no special prerog- atives, but set immediately to work to make himself useful. It was while he was wedding the box borders leading to the herb-gar- dens of Heartholm that Mrs. Strang first came upon him. Her eyes, suddenly confronted with his as he got to his feet, dropped al most guiltily, but when they sought his face a second time, Evelyn Strang experienced a dis appointment that was half relief. The sunburnt youth, in khaki trousers and brown flannel shirt, wno knelt by the border before her was John Strang Berber, Doctor Mach's human masterpiece; this was not "GargoyIe."
 "That is hardly suitable work for distinguished horticulturist," ;" the mistress of Heartholm smiled at the willing piles of pusley and sorraI.
 White teeth flashed, deep eyes kfnd1ed. Berber rose and, going to a garden seat, took up some bits of glass and a folded paper. He showed her fragments of weed pressed upon glass plates, en- velopes of seeds preserved for spe- cial analyzation. There's still a great undiscovered country in weed chemistry" he eagerly ex- plained, perhaps an anodyne for every pain and disease"
 %TYes, and deadly poisons, too, for every failure and grief.' The mistress of Heartholm said it lightly as she took the garden seat, thinking how pleasant it was to watch the resolute movements and splendid physical development of the once weaZened Gargoyle. She began sorting out her em- broidery silk as Berber, the bits of glass still in his hand, stood before her. He was smiling.
 "Yes, deadly poisons, loo" agreeing with a sort of. oxidation, so blithely, indeed, that inc calmly moving fingers of the mistress of HearthoId we're suddenly arrested. A feeling as powerful and assocfa- tive as the scent of a strong per fume stole over Evelyn Strang.
 Before she could speak Berber had resumed his wedding. 'It's good to get dictatorship over all this fight of growing" looking up for her sympathy with hesitance, which, seen in the light of his acknowledged genius, was the more significant You don't mind my taking Michael's place? He was very busy this morning. I have no credentials, but my mother seems to think I am a born gardener"
 This lack of conceit, this un- 1 assuming practicality, the sort of thing with which Gargoyle's mind | had been carefully inoculated for a long time, bafT1ed, while it re- assured Mrs. Strang. Also the 1 sense of sacred trust placed in her hands made her refrain from any | psychic probing. -OR a long while she found it |
 easy to exert this self control. l 4 The lonely woman, impressed 1 by the marvellous "cure" of John | Berber, magnetized by his youth i and sunny enthusiasms back to | the old dreaming pleasure in the i Heartholm gardens. might in the | absorbed days to come have for gotten-only there was a mans | photograph in her bedroom, placed | where her eyes always rested on | it. her hand could bring it to her | lips; the face looking out at her | seemed to say but one thing:
 You knew mel knew you. What we knew and were to each | other had rot only to do with our | bodies. Men call me dead, but | you know that I am not Why do | you not study and work and pray | to learn what I am become, that | you may turn to me, that l may | reach yoU?"
 Mockwooders, dropping in at 1 Heartholm for afternoon tea, be- gan to accustom themselves to | finding Mrs. Strang sitting near some f1ower-bed where John Der Der worked, or going with him over his great books of specimens. The smirk the fashionable world reserved for anything not usual in it's experience was less marked in this case than it might have been in others. Even those whe live in residential parks" are forced (albeit with a curious sense of personal injury) | to accept the idea that they who have greatly suffered find relief in ''queer'' ways. Mockwooders, as sisting at the HearthOlm tea-hour, and noting Berber among other casual guests, merely felt az grieved and connoted "queerness."
 For almost a year, with the talking over of plans for John Iong-cherished idea of 9 forest garden at Heartholm, there had been no allusion between mis- tress and gardener to that far-off fantasy, the life of little Gargoyle. During the autumn the two drew plans together for those spots which next spring were to blos- som in the beech glade. They sent to far-off countries for bulbs. in the HearthOlm