.

AN UNNATURAL DAUGHTER.
The brooding bird fulfills her task, Or she-bear lean and brown; All parent beasts see duty true, All parent beasts their duty do, We are the only kind that asks For duty upside down.
The stiff-rayed windmill stood like a tall mechanical flower, turning slowly in the light afternoon wind; its faint regular metallic squeak pricked the dry silence wearingly.

Rampant fuchsias, red-jewelled, heavy, ran up its framework, with crowding heliotrope and nasturtiums.
Thick straggling roses hung over the kitchen windows, and a row of dusty eucalyptus trees rustled their stiff leaves, and gave an ineffectual shade to the house.
It was one of those small frame houses common to the northeastern states, which must be dear to the hearts of their dwellers.

For no other reason, surely, would the cold grey steep-roofed little boxes be repeated so faithfully in the broad glow of a semi-tropical landscape.
There was an attempt at a "lawn," the pet ambition of the transplanted easterner; and a further attempt at "flower-beds," which merely served as a sort of springboard to their far-reaching products.
The parlor, behind the closed blinds, was as New England parlors are; minus the hint of cosiness given by even a fireless stove; the little bedrooms baked under the roof; only the kitchen spoke of human living, and the living it portrayed was not, to say the least, joyous.

It was clean, clean with a cleanness that spoke of conscientious labor and unremitting care.