BLINDFOLD

Excerpt: ?Ellen Sydney?s first garden in the Meadowburn?s new American home had made a fair beginning. She was at work one afternoon bending over the bed of sweet peas, hooking the baby tendrils to the wire mesh of the frame, with an occasional pat of the soft dark earth beneath?the earth which Bennet, the youngest of the family, had brought by the basketful from a distance, to enrich the yellow clay that filled in the property. School was just out and as she worked Bennet banged into the hall, threw down his books and rushed forth again with a shout to join his comrades up the street. They were building a ?switch-back railway? from the second story rear window of a neighbour?s house. She could just glimpse the murderous rickety scaffolding of it through the small leaves of the alley poplars. Fastening up the last of the tendrils to the wire, Ellen heard Mrs. Osprey?s shrill voice calling from quite half a block away to one of the Osprey boys. She could not restrain a smile at the familiar summons. ?Poor woman,? thought she, ?they do worry her.? But she would no more have thought of pitying Mrs. Osprey actually, than of feeling sorry for Her Majesty Queen Alexandra, whom many years in Canada had taught her to believe next to the angels themselves. As she turned from the garden she heard a still more familiar voice and Potter Osprey came through the gate."