It was plainly the table of no ordinary gardener or caretaker--but this conclusion did not come to me until afterward, for as I remember it, we were in a deep discussion of fertilizers.
Mrs.Vedder cooked and served breakfast herself, and did it with a skill almost equal to Harriet's--so skillfully that the talk went on and we never once heard the machinery of service.
After breakfast we all went out into the garden, Mrs.Vedder in an old straw hat and a big apron, and Mr.Vedder in a pair of old brown overalls.

Two men had appeared from somewhere, and were digging in the vegetable garden.

After giving them certain directions Mr.Vedder and I both found five-tined forks and went into the rose garden and began turning over the rich soil, while Mrs.Vedder, with pruning-shears, kept near us, cutting out the dead wood.
It was one of the charming forenoons of my life.

This pleasant work, spiced with the most interesting conversation and interrupted by a hundred little excursions into other parts of the garden, to see this or that wonder of vegetation, brought us to dinner-time before we fairly knew it.
About the middle of the afternoon I made the next discovery.

I heard first the choking cough of a big motor-car in the country road, and a moment later it stopped at our gate.