old place alive with their youth and spirits; and it was
evident that later on Hugh would win honor to the Burgh in battle and
adventure, and Lionel would draw the world thither with his charm. But
Hobb, to whom they all brought their shapeless dreams white-hot, since
sympathy helps us to create bodies for the things which begin their
existence as souls--Hobb differed from the four others not only in his
name, but in his plain appearance and simple tastes. And all these
things, as well as his tender heart, he got from his mother, who was
the only daughter of a gardener of Alfriston. The gardener, to whom she
was the very apple of his eye, had kept her privately in a place on a
hill, fearing lest in her youth and inexperience she should fall to the
lot of some man not worthy of her; for her knew, or believed, that a
young girl of her sweetness and tenderness and devotedness of
disposition would by her sweetness attract a lover too early, and by
her tenderness respond to him too readily, and by her devotedness
follow him too blindly, before she had time to know herself or men. And
he also knew, or believed, that first love is as often a
will-o'-the-wisp as the star for which all young things take it. Five
days in the week he tended the gardens of Alfriston, the sixth he gave
to the Lord of the Burgh that lay among the hills, and the seventh he
kept for his daughter on the hill a few miles distant, which was
afterwards known as Hobb's Hawth. She on her part spent her week in
endeavoring to grow a perfect rose of a certain golden species, and her
heart was given wholly to her father and her flower. And he watched her
efforts with interest and advice, and for the first she thanked him but
of the second took no heed. "For," said she, "this is MY garden,
father, and MY rose, and I will grow it in my own way or not at all.
Have you not had a lifetime of gardens and roses which you have brought
to perfection? And would you let any man take your own upon his
shoulders, even your own mistakes, and shoulder at last the praise
after the blame?" Then Hobb, her father, laughed at her indulgently and
said, "Nay, not any man; yet once I let a woman, and without her aid I
would never have brought my rarest and dearest flower to perfection. So
if I should let a woman help me, why not you a man?" "Was the woman
your mother?" said she. And her father was silent. Then a day came when
he trudged up and down the hills from Alfriston, and standi