above the soil. I hovered
about, chucking in stones and earth underneath, placing little rocks under
the bar for fulcrums, pulling them out again when they were no longer
needed, standing guard over the flowers in the rest of the garden, with
repeated warnings. "Please, Jonathan, don't step back any farther; you'll
trample the forget-me-nots!" "_Could_ you manage to roll this fellow out
along that path and not across the mangled bodies of the marigolds?"
Jonathan grumbled a little about being expected to pick a half-ton pebble
out of the garden with his fingers, or lead it out with a string.

"Oh, well, of course, if you _can't_ do it I'll have to let the marigolds
go this year. But you do such wonderful things with a crowbar, I thought
you could probably just guide it a little." And Jonathan responds nobly to
the flattery of this remark, and does indeed guide the huge thing, eases
it along the narrow path, grazes the marigolds but leaves them unhurt,
until at last, with a careful arrangement of stone fulcrums and a skillful
twist of the bars, the great rock makes its last response and lunges
heavily past the last flower bed on to the grass beyond.

When the work was done, the edge of the garden looked like Stonehenge, and
the spot where my grass was to be was nothing but a yawning pit, crying to
be filled. We surveyed it with interest. "If we had a water-supply, I
wouldn't make a grass-plot," I said; "I'd make a swimming-pool. It's deep
enough."

"And sit in the middle with your book?" asked Jonathan.

But there was no water-supply, so we filled it in with earth. Thirty
wheelbarrow loads went in where those rocks came out. And the little
gnomes perched on Stonehenge and jeered the while. I photographed it, and
the rocks "took" well, but as regards the gnomes, the film was
underexposed.

Thus the grass seed was planted. And we reminded each other of the version
of "America" once given, with unconscious inspiration, by a little friend
of ours:--

"Land where our father died,
Land where the pilgrims pried."

It seemed to us to suit the adventure.

As I have said, I love to have my friends love my garden. But there is one
thing about it that I find does not always appeal to them pleasantly, and
that is its color-schemes. Yet this is not my doing. For in nothing do I
feel more keenly the fact of my mere stewardship than in this matter of
color-scheme.

I set out with a very rigid one. I was quite deci