"There's a sore trouble in store for those little dears, and I hadn't the heart to tell them myself. You'll know best how to do it. Their gardens are all destroyed, root and branch; not a thing left. Their pet plants, the heliotrope and geranium that they set so much store by, are rooted up and torn to bits, not a piece left as big as my hand. And it was not the storm either that did it, but just those wicked children, Lem and Dolly, or one of them. I don't think it could have been the boy, for I don't see how he could have found his way down here again last night after John saw him home; but, alone or together, the girl has had a hand in it for sure. John picked up a dirty old sunbonnet she used to wear, lying right in Bessie's garden, and he says she was not at home when he went up with Lem last night. She's done it out of revenge for his being shut up, and I wish Buffer had caught her at it, so I do. My patience is quite at an end, and I'll have them routed out of that place, and sent off somewhere, as sure as my name is Thomas Porter."