ys she doesn't want to. He says it will take a couple hours to get the cattle with a worker on the ranch and then they will go into town for dinner.
She has time to transplant some chrysanthemums while her husband and the other man ride into the hills to get the steers which he has sold. We see the love which Elisa has for her gardening:
There was a little square sandy bed kept for rooting the chrysanthemums. With her trowel she turned the soil over and over, and smoothed it and patted it firm. Then she dug ten parallel trenches to receive the sets. Back at the chrysanthemum bed she pulled out the little crisp shoots, trimmed off the leaves of each one with her scissors and laid it on a small orderly pile (1511).
And then the stranger arrives. He comes in an "old spring-wagon . . . drawn by an old bay horse and a little grey-and-white burro." He is a "big stubble-bearded man" (1511). There is a "rangy mongre
...