This was not at all like the Alice of former years, of other charges.
Why, she had been, beyond comparison, the most popular young woman in
Tyre. What possessed her to mope like this in Octavius?
Theron looked at her attentively nowadays, when she was unaware of his
gaze, to try if her face offered any answer to the riddle. It could not
be suggested that she was ill. Never in her life had she been looking so
well. She had thrown herself, all at once, and with what was to him
an unaccountable energy, into the creation and management of a
flower-garden. She was out the better part of every day, rain or shine,
digging, transplanting, pruning, pottering generally about among her
plants and shrubs. This work in the open air had given her an aspect of
physical well-being which it was impossible to be mistaken about.
Her husband was glad, of course, that she had found some occupation
which at once pleased her and so obviously conduced to health. This was
so much a matter of course, in fact, that he said to himself over and
over again that he was glad. Only--only, sometimes the thought WOULD
force itself upon his attention that if she did not spend so much of her
time in her own garden, she would have more time to devote to winning
friends for them in the Garden of the Lord--friends whom they were going
to need badly.
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