"To hell and back again with the dust, Allena. Look here at your flowers and candles and your bowl of broken shells. And out here."
He dragged her to the door, shoved it open. "Here's a garden that was suffering from neglect until the morning. Where's the sand that was all over the walk that I didn't even notice until it was gone? There are sheets drying in the wind out back and soup heating in the kitchen. The bloody shower doesn't drip now. Who did those things?"
"Anyone can sweep a walk, Conal."
"Not everyone thinks to. Not everyone cares to. And not everyone finds pleasure in the doing of it. In one day you made a home out of this place, and it hasn't been one in too long, so that I'd all but forgotten the feel of a home around me. Do you think that's nothing? Do you think there's no value in that?"
"It's just and ordinary," she said for lack of a better word.
"I can't make a career out of picking wildflowers."
"A living can be made where you find it, if a living must be made. You've a need to pick wildflowers and sea-shells, Allena. And there are those who are grateful for it, and notice the difference you make."
If she hadn't loved him already, she would have fallen at that moment with his words still echoing and his eyes dark with impatience. "That's the kindest thing anyone's ever said to me."
Ever After
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By Benson Kua from Toronto, Canada (One Uploaded by tm) [CC BY-SA 2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
These ideas are going to give you a serious case of spring fever.