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confidentially over the fence. “Maybe you noticed the writing on my wagon. I mend pots and sharpen knives and scissors. You got any of them things to do?”
    “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “Nothing like that.” Her eyes hardened with resistance.
    “Scissors is the worst thing,” he explained. “Most people just ruin scissors trying to sharpen ’em, but I know how. I got a special tool. It’s a little bobbit kind of thing, and patented. But it sure does the trick.”
    “No. My scissors are all sharp.”
    “All right, then. Take a pot,” he continued earnestly, “a bent pot, or a pot with a hole. I can make it like new so you don’t have to buy no new ones. That’s a saving for you.”
    “No,” she said shortly. “I tell you I have nothing like that for you to do.”
    His face fell to an exaggerated sadness. His voice took on a whining undertone. “I ain’t had a thing to do today. Maybe I won’t have no supper tonight. You see I’m off my regular road. I know folks on the highway clear from Seattle to San Diego. They save their things for me to sharpen up because they know I do it so good and save them money.”
    “I’m sorry,” Elisa said irritably. “I haven’t anything for you to do.”
    His eyes left her face and fell to searching the ground. They roamed about until they came to the chrysanthemum bed where she had been working. “What’s them plants, ma’am?”
    The irritation and resistance melted from Elisa’s face. “Oh, those are chrysanthemums, giant whites and yellows. I raise them every year, bigger than anybody around here.”
    “Kind of a long-stemmed flower? Looks like a quick puff of colored smoke?” he asked.
    “That’s it. What a nice way to describe them.”
    “They smell kind of nasty till you get used to them,” he said.
    “It’s a good bitter smell,” she retorted, “not nasty at all.”
    He changed his tone quickly. “I like the smell myself.”
    “I had ten-inch blooms this year,” she said.
    The man leaned farther over the fence. “Look. I know a lady down the road a piece, has got the nicest garden you ever seen. Got nearly every kind of flower but no chrysantheums. Last time I was mending a copper-bottom washtub for her (that’s a hard job but I do it good), she said to me, ‘If you ever run acrost some nice chrysantheums I wish you’d try to get me a few seeds.’ That’s what she told me.”
    Elisa’s eyes grew alert and eager. “She couldn’t have known much about chrysanthemums. You can raise them from seed, but it’s much easier to root the little sprouts you see there.”
    “Oh,” he said. “I s’pose I can’t take none to her, then.”
    “Why yes you can,” Elisa cried. “I can put some in damp sand, and you can carry them right along with you. They’ll take root in the pot if you keep them damp. And then she can transplant them.”
    “She’d sure like to have some, ma’am. You say they’re nice ones?”
    “Beautiful,” she said. “Oh, beautiful.” Her eyes shone. She tore off the battered hat and shook out her dark pretty hair. “I’ll put them in a flower pot, and you can take them right with you. Come into the yard.”
    While the man came through the picket gate Elisa ran excitedly along the geranium-bordered path to the back of the house. And she returned carrying a big red flower pot. The gloves were forgotten now. She kneeled on the ground by the starting bed and dug up the sandy soil with her fingers and scooped it into the bright new flower pot. Then she picked up the little pile of shoots she had prepared. With her strong fingers she pressed them into the sand and tamped around them with her knuckles. The man stood over her. “I’ll tell you what to do,” she said. “You remember so you can tell the lady.”
    “Yes, I’ll try to remember.”
    “Well, look. These will take root in about a month. Then she must set them out, about a foot apart in good rich earth like this, see?” She lifted a handful of dark