“Well—where are we, anyway?” he asked placidly.
“I don’t know at all. Only I feel sure that leading the simple life doesn’t depend on the things you do it _with_. Feeding your own cows and pigs and using pumps and candles brings you no nearer to it than marketing by telephone and using city water supply and electric lighting. I don’t know what does bring you nearer, but I’m sure it must be something inside you.”
“That sounds rather reasonable,” said Jonathan; “almost scriptural—”
It is late afternoon in mid-September. I stand in my garden sniffing the raw air, and wondering, as always at this season, _will_ there be frost to-night or will there not? Of course if I were a woodchuck or a muskrat, or any other really intelligent creature, I should know at once and act accordingly, but being only a stupid human being, I am thrown back on conjecture, assisted by the thermometer, and an appeal to Jonathan.
“Sure? I’d hate to lose my nasturtiums quite so early.”
“You won’t lose ’em. Look at the thermometer if you don’t believe me. If it’s above forty you’re safe.”
I look, and try to feel reassured. But I am not quite easy in my mind until next morning when, running out before breakfast, I make the rounds and find everything untouched.
But a few days later the alarm comes again. There is no wind this time, and, what is worse, an ominous silence falls at dusk over the orchard and meadow. “Why is everything so still?” I ask myself. “Oh, of course—the katydids aren’t talking—and the crickets, and all the other whirr-y things. Ah! That means business! My poor garden!”
“Jonathan!” I call, as I feel rather than see his shape whirling noiselessly in at the big gate after his ride up from the station. “Help me cover my nasturtiums. There’ll be frost to-night.”
“Not maybe at all—surely. Listen to the katydids!”
“You mean, listen to the absence of katydids.”
“Very well. The point is, I want newspapers.”
“No. The point is, I am to bring newspapers.”
“And tuck up your nasturtiums for the night in your peculiarly ridiculous fashion—”
“I know it looks ridiculous, but really it’s sensible. There may be weeks of summer after this.”
And so the nasturtiums are tucked up, cozily hidden under the big layers of sheets, whose corners we fasten down with stones. To be sure, the garden _is_ rather a funny sight, with these pale shapes sprawling over its beds. But it pays. For in the morning, though over in the vegetable garden the squash leaves and lima beans are blackened and limp, my nasturtiums are still pert and crisp. I pull off the papers, wondering what the passers-by have thought, and lo! my gay garden, good for perhaps two weeks more!