When, on rare occasions, Auntie Merrill walked slowly down the path, she appeared to be totally unaware that Indians, highway robbers, pirates, cowboys, spies, scouts, and other ruffians were dogging her footsteps from bush to bush. We always thought it best to keep an eye on her.
It is a perfectly safe place to-day. Auntie Merrill is dead; the shrubs are trimmed, the hedges cut down, the paths covered with asphalt, and the whole garden a dismal spectacle of precision, order, and expensive simplicity.
But on the morning when we returned to look after our buried rose-leaves, no one had dreamed of these wretched improvements. Keeping well down below the hedge, we reached the lilies-of-the-valley without encountering any opposition. The place of burial was inspected and the earth searched for tracks.
Then we stood over the spot and meditated. A lilac bush sheltered us from inquisitive persons in the house.
"I wonder how they're gettin' on," he said.
Then there was another pause. I poked my foot among the lilies where we had concealed the shingles we had used as trowels. They were waiting for Tuesday morning.
Already I was fishing for the shingles. In half a minute we had brought the grape leaf once more to the light of day. We unfastened it and gazed upon its contents.
It was a quarter past ten. Fifteen minutes had passed since we buried the mixture.
"Don't you suppose they're done?" I queried.
Ed's only reply was to take a pinch between his fingers and convey it to his mouth.
Then we ate the whole lot. It tasted--and on this point I will pledge my word--it tasted exactly like rose-leaves and brown sugar!
On an afternoon early in the following week, Jimmy Toppan, Ed Mason, and I were seriously engaged at the frog pond. We had discovered, in the morning, an outlet, through which all the water was in danger of escaping. The town authorities seemed to have overlooked this channel, but we could not let their neglect cause public suffering.
To have the pond run dry was too serious to contemplate!
"The water wouldn't _all_ go out," asserted Ed Mason, "'cos there's a place, back of the Court House, where there ain't any bottom."
"That ain't in _this_ pond," Jimmy corrected, "it's over in Davenport's."