thusiasm of the one-time master of the
Deanery Garden, Rochester, that, like the child turned loose in the toy
shop, you would lose the power of choosing.

Lavinia Cortright lost nearly a year in beginning her rosary, owing to a
similar condition of mind, and Evan and I long ago decided that when we
read we cannot work, and _vice versa_, so when the Garden of Outdoors is
abed and asleep each year, we enter the Garden of Books with fresh
delight.

Have you a man with quick wit and a straight eye to be the spade hand
during the Garden Vacation? If not, make haste to find him, for, as you
have had Barney for five years, he is probably too set in his ways to
work at innovations cheerfully!

VIII

A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)

_June 21._ The rosary has been duly surveyed, staked according to the
plan, and the border lines fixed with the garden line dipped in
whitewash, so that if we only plant a bed at a time, our ambition will
always be before us. But as yet no man cometh to dig. This process is of
greater import than it may seem, because with the vigorous
three-year-old sod thus obtained do we purpose to turf the edges of the
beds for hardy and summer flowers that border the squares of the
vegetable garden. These strips now crumble earth into the walks, and the
slightest footfall is followed by a landslide. We had intended to use
narrow boards for edging, but Bart objects, like the old retainer in
Kipling's story of _An Habitation Enforced_, on the ground that they
will deteriorate from the beginning and have to be renewed every few
years, whereas the turf will improve, even if it is more trouble to care
for.

At present the necessity of permanence is one of the things that is
impressing us both, for after us--the Infant! Until a year ago I had a
positive dread of being so firmly fixed anywhere that to spread wings
and fly here and there would be difficult, but now it seems the most
delightful thing to be rooted like the old apple tree on the side hill,
the last of the old orchard, that has leaned against the upland winds so
many years that it is well-nigh bent double, yet the root anchors hold
and it is still a thing of beauty, like rosy-cheeked old folk with snowy
hair. I do not think that I ever realized this in its fulness until I
left the house and came out, though but a short way, to live with and in
it all.

You were right in thinking that Barney would not encourage
in