He is known to come from York State and has a Yankee shrewdness that
some people say can at times be called something else. He is wide and
square-shouldered though short, has a round stubborn head of reddish
hair with a promising bald spot, close-set blue eyes and an annoying,
almost an insulting habit of paying all his bills promptly and asking
odds and favors of nobody.
To-day he was to have taken a load of stones, granite niggerheads of
all sizes, up to Colonel Stratton's place. The Colonel is going to
make a fern bed around his summer house.
Colonel Stratton is a real military colonel. He wears burnsides and
they are very becoming. He has the most beautifully located residence
in Green Valley and like Doc Philipps has some of the most beautiful
trees in town. The great silver-leaf poplar guarding the wide front
lawns and the magnificent hardwood maples are the pride of the
colonel's heart.
The colonel has a cultivated garden that keeps his gardener pretty
busy. But the wild-flower garden along the rambling old north fence
the colonel tends himself. In June it is a hedge of lovely wild roses
followed a little later by masses of purple phlox. Then come the
meadow lilies and the painted cup and so on, until in late October you
can not see the old fence for the goldenrod, asters and gentians.
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