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Way beyend the labyrinths, and to the left on't, is the Palm Garden, with lounging places for three or four hundred visitors, and a Moorish orchestra hid by a cluster of branchin' palms, and Arab attendants in native costumes. And then there wuz grottoes and fountains lit by electric lights, and groups of statuary illustratin' famous historical seens.
Hawley ain't so young as he was, an' mor'n that, he's got rheumatism in his arm. So one mornin' he say to me 'Ebenezer, he say, 'I reckon you'll have to take on the windin' up. My hand is gettin' shaky. Well, sir, had he given me the management of a railroad I couldn't have been prouder. That's why, when Seventeen begun branchin' out for herself, I was so 'specially upset.
"'I bought some bolts o' ribbon to-day, says she, smilin'; 'and fer the rest, the garden, you, and I will manage it together, if you'll lend me a shelf all to meself in the cold closet whenever I need it! Sure fer a moment I wuz oneasy, fer I thought a wild streak run branchin' through all the boss's family!"
"He said he thought we'd better have the old one shingled." "Turrible short-sighted, that's what I say," grumbled the old man; "but he ain't ever fer branchin' out, the jedge ain't. Why didn't ye talk him over to it, Thinkright?" "I didn't feel strongly about it. He'd do it if I urged him; but it's just as you say, he doesn't want to branch out.
Mostly he tells me about his son, who's livin' out in California somewhere and is just branchin' out in the cement block buildin' business. Son is messin' in politics more or less too; mixin' it up with the machine, and gettin' the short end of the returns every trip.
He's forever tellin' me of some new way he's thought of for branchin' out somewhere an' his branches make me more'n a little nervous. The old ways is good enough for us an' I try to hold him down to that idea, but first he wants me to get a new kind of flatirons as takes off while you heat it, an' next he wants me to fix the paper all over new.
I know jest what those pains are: kinder ez ef you was havin' a tooth pulled that had roots branchin' all over ye! My! I've jest had 'em so bad I couldn't keep from yellin'! That's hot rheumatics! Yes, sir, I oughter know! "There! didn't I tell ye? Ye'll be all right in a minit, and ez chipper ez a jay bird in the mornin'. Oh, don't tell me about rheumatics I've bin thar!
I sunk down under the shade of a branchin' Poppy Tree, and laid there becalmed and peaceful till Miss Plankses risin' bell rung way up the stairway, up into my bedroom and echoed over into the Land, shook the drowsy boughs over my head, and waked me up. And then, tired as I wuz the night before, I felt considerable chipper. Wall, this mornin' we sot off in good season.
"I guess your duty's chalked out for you pretty plain; an' I reckon if you're any sort of a Webster you'll do it an' not go branchin' off followin' notions of your own not after all these years." "I don't believe in keeping up traditions unless they are good ones." The older woman's lips tightened. "You mean you'd break off from what your folks thought?" "If I felt it to be right, yes."
But instead of branchin' out and makin' a great show, he jest kep right on a-livin' in the rooms he had took so long ago for his family. But they had all gone and left him, his mother dead, and his two nieces gone with their father to California, where they wuz in a convent school. And he kep right on a-livin' in the old rooms.
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