First and foremost , they would have told you that he was `` shiftless , '' and had let his bit of a farm run out while he pottered with flowers and bugs , or rambled aimlessly about in the woods , or read books along the shore . Perhaps it was true ; but the old farm yielded him a living , and further than that Old Man Shaw had no ambition . He was as blithe as a pilgrim on a pathway climbing to the west . He had learned the rare secret that you must take happiness when you find it -- that there is no use in marking the place and coming back to it at a more convenient season , because it will not be there then . And it is very easy to be happy if you know , as Old Man Shaw most thoroughly knew , how to find pleasure in little things . He enjoyed life , he had always enjoyed life and helped others to enjoy it ; consequently his life was a success , whatever White Sands people might think of it . What if he had not `` improved '' his farm ? There are some people to whom life will never be anything more than a kitchen garden ; and there are others to whom it will always be a royal palace with domes and minarets of rainbow fancy . The orchard of which he was so proud was as yet little more than the substance of things hoped for -- a flourishing plantation of young trees which would amount to something later on . Old Man Shaw 's house was on the crest of a bare , sunny hill , with a few staunch old firs and spruces behind it -- the only trees that could resist the full sweep of the winds that blew bitterly up from the sea at times . Fruit trees would never grow near it , and this had been a great grief to Sara . `` Oh , daddy , if we could just have an orchard ! '' she had been wont to say wistfully , when other farmhouses in White Sands were smothered whitely in apple bloom . And when she had gone away , and her father had nothing to look forward to save her return , he was determined she should find an orchard when she came back . Over the southward hill , warmly sheltered by spruce woods and sloping to the sunshine , was a little field , so fertile that all the slack management of a life-time had not availed to exhaust it . Here Old Man Shaw set out his orchard and saw it flourish , watching and tending it until he came to know each tree as a child and loved it . His neighbours laughed at him , and said that the fruit of an orchard so far away from the house would all be stolen . But as yet there was no fruit , and when the time came for bearing there would be enough and to spare . `` Blossom and me 'll get all we want , and the boys can have the rest , if they want 'em worse 'n they want a good conscience , '' said that unworldly , unbusinesslike Old Man Shaw . On his way back home from his darling orchard he found a rare fern in the woods and dug it up for Sara -- she had loved ferns .
He planted it at the shady , sheltered side of the house and then sat down on the old bench by the garden gate XXXXX read her last letter -- the letter that was only a note , because she was coming home soon .
On Over along as behind by for if to until