flowers as it is
to spoil a nice bit of lawn with too many fantastic flower beds!" Bart
broke in quite unexpectedly, coming behind me and raising my face, one
hand beneath my chin. "Isn't that what you were thinking, my Lady Lazy?"

"Truly it was, only I never meant to let it pop out so suddenly and
rudely," I was forced to confess. "In one way it would seem impossible
to have too many flowers about, and yet in another it is unnatural, for
are not nature's unconscious effects made by using colour as a central
point, a focus that draws the eye from a more sombre and soothing
setting?"

"How could we enjoy a sunset that held the whole circle of the horizon
at once?" chimed in _The Man_, suddenly, as if reading my thoughts. "Or
twelve moons?" added Bart, laughing.

No, Mrs. Evan, I am convinced by so short a trial as two weeks that the
art of arranging flowers for the house is first, your plan of having
some to greet the guest as he enters, a bit of colour or coolness in
each room where we pause to read or work or chat, and a table
garnishing to render aesthetic the aspect and surroundings of the human
animal at his feeding time; otherwise, except at special seasons of
festivity, a surplus of flowers in the house makes for restlessness, not
peace. Two days ago I had thirty-odd vases and jars filled with flowers,
and I felt, as I sat down to sew, as if I was trespassing in a bazaar!
Also, if there are too many jars of various flowers in one room, it is
impossible that each should have its own individuality.

To-day I began my new plan. I put away a part of my jars and vases and
deliberately thought out what flowers I would use before gathering them.

The day being overcast though not threatening, merely the trail, as it
were, of the storm that had passed, and the den being on the north side
of the house and finished in dark woodwork and furniture, I gathered
nasturtiums in three shades for it, the deep crimson, orange-scarlet,
and canary-yellow, but not too many--a blue-and-white jar of the Chinese
"ginger" pattern for one corner of the mantel-shelf, and for the
Japanese well buckets, that are suspended from the central hanging lamp
by cords, a cascade of blossoms of the same colour still attached to
their own fleshy vines and interspersed with the foliage. Strange as it
may seem, this little bit of pottery, though of a peculiar deep pink,
harmonizes wonderfully well with the barbaric nasturtium colours. There
seems t