Dugan drew a long breath; and
swaggered toward the garage. His walk and manner had in them an
easy openness that no honest man's could possibly have acquired
in a lifetime.
The Mistress, deposited at the front veranda, chirped to Lad; and
started across the lawn toward the chrysanthemum bed, a hundred
feet away.
The summer's flowers were gone--even to the latest thin stemmed
Teplitz rose and the last stalk of rose-tinted cosmos. For dining
table, now, and for living-room and guest rooms, nothing was left
but the mauve and bronze hardy chrysanthemums which made gay the
flower border at the crest of the lawn overlooking the lake.
Thither fared the Mistress, in search of blossoms.
Between her and the chrysanthemum border was a bed of canvas.
Frost had smitten the tall, dark stems; leaving only a copse of
brown stalks. Out of this copse, chewing greedily at an uprooted
bunch of canna-bulbs, slouched Romaine's wandering sow. At, sight
of the Mistress, she paused in her leisurely progress and, with
the bunch of bulbs still hanging from one corner of her
shark-mouth, stood blinking truculently at the astonished woman.
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