Bud sat in the park,--Clothes-line Park, Amarilly had dubbed it--one
Monday afternoon, singing a song of gladness. The park was confined by a
clothes-line stretched between three tottering poles and the one
solitary poplar tree of the Jenkins estate. The line was hung with white
linen garments, and smaller articles adorned the grass plot within the
park.

This to Bud was the most beautiful spot in the world. He looked up into
the sapphire blue of the sky flecked with soft patches of white, then
down upon the waving grass latticed by sun and shade; he listened to the
soothing rustle of the poplar leaves, the soft flapping of linen in the
breeze, the birds in the tree tops, and felt his heart and throat
bursting with all the harmony and melody about him. Not always was Bud's
refrain one of joy. There were songs of sorrow on the damp days when the
washings must be dried within the house, and he could not venture forth
because he still was regarded as the delicate one of the family. There
were days, too, when the number of garments was not adequate to complete
the boundary to the park, and that meant less to eat and worry about the
rent and a harassed look in his mother's anxious eyes.

But there was no sob in Bud's song this afternoon. The clothes had been
hung out unusually early, and were nearly dry, so his mother had brought
out her little lean-back rocker and sat beside him for a few moments to
listen to his carol and to hark back to the days when his lusty-voiced
father had sung to her in the shadows of a vine clad porch.