The Blessed Garden.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 203, 28 August 1935, Page 18

The Blessed Garden.

This, is the story of wee Bridget's "unselfish garden," and how it grew and what it brought her. Pat Rear don's rooster flapped his wings and hopped atop the half-door. Pat sat up in Ms bed by the chimney corner. He could see that the sun had already scaled the weather vane on the pig house. "It's morning, Bridget," he cried. "Get up, ye lazy bones. Don't you know what day it is?" Bridget stirred on the far side of the chimney and shook her curls to set her thoughts a-running. "What day is. it, Pat?" she demanded. "It's not the Sabbath, surely?" "Bridget Reardon! Don't you know that this is the day when Squire Clarey gives out flower seeds to the children of (Jounty Antrium ?" "Aye, Pat," she cried, "I was forgetting." But now she had her pink toes on the flagstones. In a flash she was full dressed and was outside of the door tiippirg her head in the rain barrel to take the dream whiskers out of her eyes. Pat was looking to matters more important. He had his hand in the kettle.on the rim of the chimney and was digging away in it with a wooden spoon. Now that his bowl was full of porridge he pulled a stool to the turf tire and sat down with his bowl in his lap. .When, Bridget came in the porridge 'had mostly gone to the middle of Pat Reardon, and iiow his feet were down on the flagstones; eager to be on their way. ' •- "The distance is long, Bridget Beardon," said he, "and if you won't be hastening Lew Clarey's. seeds will all be gone. Then we will do without, same-'as we've done other years. There now. • There goes Tim O'Brien. Tim, I say, I'll run along with ye. Bridget Reardon, your steps are short and your ways are slow. I'll not be waiting for yu any longer." And so saying, Pat flew out by the way of the half-door and over the hedge. .Bridget had her porridge scooped out but now she had to set her bowl down on the chimney rim. for she'd not have Pat running off without her. The heather was wet with the dew of morn and the smell of the bog was in the air. Yet it was not so early but that pattering feet were out upon every lane. Biddy Reardon herself had often said that had it not been for Squire Clarey and his seeds there'd not be a single flower in the whole of Antrium.

For who beside the children had time to tend to them, when there were the hens and the pigs to look to, and the geese who" could not stay out of the rye? With their clucking and grunting and quacking, one never caught up with one's thinking even until the day had gone. Squire Clarey had a way with the children. He offered a sum to the one who had the best garden in the whole of Antrium, so whether they liked flowers or no, as long as the seed held out. there were always hands to receive. It was the sum they all had "in mind.

"I'll be making a garden in the corner by the bog," said Pat, "and it will be a garden the sun himself will be envying me. When it's full grown Squire Clarey himself will come a-tapping upon the half-door and he'll say, 'Pat, it's a fine boy ye are. Ye have a wee bit of a garden the like of which cannot be found in Antrium. Here is a. pound in silver. Go buy ye some breeches and a jerkin with. gold buttons, me boy.'" "Pat Reardon," cried Bridget, "won't he say aught of my garden then ?" "He'll say, 'Bridget, me wee smal 1 , lass, ye be much too small to grow a garden, yet,' he'll say, 'when ye get to be

the size of Pat Reardon, your brother there, then it's a garden ye may be thinking about. Now run and look to the hens lest they scratch the rye out by the roots, :me lass.'" "But won't Squire Clarey say aught that is good about that wee garden of mine?" insisted Bridget. "He'll not speak another word than what he's just said," declared Pat Reardon, and now their nimble feet had carried them over to the squire's big estate. One could see by the long line of them that the sun had awakened Pat Reardon

not a whit too soon, for there was Mary O'Brien with all seven of the wee O'Briens; Patsy and Finnigan and O'Rourke from across the bog, with all their cousins, and then there were Mike and Peggy, and the tinker's two, and Jerry, the miller's boy. Tim O'Brien stood before Pat, since he was the bigger of the two. Wee small Bridget stood last. She wondered if there would be so much as a seed left when the squire came to her. And then, wurra, wurra, to make matters worse, the five lads from Murray's came leaping over the braes and hedges. (To be continued next Wednesday.)