of alert cheerfulness
and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly
tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs
down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement
itself; and is there anything in the world more charming than the
sprightly way they hold up their little faces to the sun. I have heard
them called bold and flaunting, but to me they seem modest grace itself,
only always on the alert to enjoy life as much as they can and not
afraid of looking the sun or anything else above them in the face. On
the grass there are two beds of them carpeted with forget-me-nots; and
in the grass, in scattered groups, are daffodils and narcissus. Down
the wilder shrubbery walks foxgloves and mulleins will (I hope) shine
majestic; and one cool corner, backed by a group of firs, is graced by
Madonna lilies, white foxgloves, and columbines.

In a distant glade I have made a spring garden round an oak tree that
stands alone in the sun--groups of crocuses, daffodils, narcissus,
hyacinths, and tulips, among such flowering shrubs and trees as Pirus
Malus spectabilis, floribunda, and coronaria; Prunus Juliana, Mahaleb,
serotina, triloba, and Pissardi; Cydonias and Weigelias in every colour,
and several kinds of Crataegus and other May lovelinesses. If the
weather behaves itself nicely, and we get gentle rains in due season, I
think this little corner will be beautiful--but what a big "if" it is!
Drought is our great enemy, and the two last summers each contained five
weeks of blazing, cloudless heat when all the ditches dried up and the
soil was like hot pastry. At such times the watering is naturally quite
beyond the strength of two men; but as a garden is a place to be happy
in, and not one where you want to meet a dozen curious eyes at every
turn, I should not like to have more than these two, or rather one and a
half--the assistant having stork-like proclivities and going home in the
autumn to his native Russia, returning in the spring with the first warm
winds. I want to keep him over the winter, as there is much to be done
even then, and I sounded him on the point the other day. He is the
most abject-looking of human beings--lame, and afflicted with a hideous
eye-disease; but he is a good worker and plods along unwearyingly from
sunrise to dusk.

"Pray, my good stork," said I, or German words to that effect, "why
don't you stay here altogether, instead of going home