Chapter I: HAD pointed out, quite nicely and kindly, to Virginia, that she was (1)

not clipping the top of the square box-tree table straight and even; and she had pointed out, quite witheringly, to me that she was cutting it by perspective, adding that if I had only been privileged to learn perspective when I was young, I should have known that for a thing to be correct in its outlines and proportions it must necessarily run askew and aslant and out-at-corners, just as the top of the box-tree table was now doing. She assured me, however, that it would appear all right, she thought, if I looked at it from an airship above, with half-closed eyes.

And then she advised me to do a little hoeing.

I ignored her sarcasm, knowing full well that a pair of shears, applied by amateur hands to tough overgrown greenstuff, is apt to provoke cutting remarks when the wielder has got to the moist stage and the hedge is looking like a ploughed field.

You see, there was an inwardness in her last remark; for hoeing looks an easy, graceful, carefree occupation—till you try it. My own method is distinctive; I didn’t invent it, it came to me as a natural inspiration. I find I invariably start to hoe with my back, doubling up more and more, and aching more and more, as I proceed with the hacking. Then, as I warm to the work (and it’s very much warm as a rule), I likewise hoe with my teeth. By the time I have set and ground these nearly to nothing—my hands all the while getting lower and lower down the handle of my tool—I find myself beginning to hoe quite viciously with my head.

When I have extracted all the motive power I can from this part of me, and have projected it so far in front of the rest of me—hoe included—that I almost lose my balance, the only thing left for me to do, by way of piling up yet more energy and effort, appears to be to go down on all fours, seeing that by this time I am clasping the hoe handle at about a foot from the ground.

Fortunately, it is just here that I usually realize what I am doing, and I straighten my rounded back, and undo my teeth (that doesn’t sound polite, but you know what I mean), and return my head to its proper place. I then remind myself that I am not hoeing at all scientifically, that most of the energy I have been putting forth has been waste—because misdirected—force.

Whereupon I stand at ease, and other things like that. Maintaining the upright as far as I can, I take hold of the top end of the long handle of my weapon, and, still keeping quite in the perpendicular, I merely hoe with my arms, thus saving the rest of me quite a considerable number of unclassified aches. So long as I can remember to keep my vertebræ like this, all is well, and I really get through a fair amount of work. But, alas, I soon forget.

One thing I have never yet managed to do is to keep cool and collected, my misfortune being that I boil up so soon. My hat gets out of angle, my hair flattens out where it ought to be wavy, and waves around where it ought to lie flat; and—worst of all—it ceases to worry me that these things are so.

And then I open a periodical wherein some unknown celebrity has been photographed “at home”; and she is sure to be shown “in the garden,” where, behold! you see her in the airiest of fashionable nothings in the way of a white frock, accompanied by a ten-guinea hat, a twenty-guinea dog, and a sixpence-halfpenny trowel—all worn with consummate photographic grace, as she artlessly sets to work to transplant a hoary wistaria that has smothered the (photographer’s) verandah for fifty years, explaining to the interviewer, meanwhile, how she simply adores gardening, how she gets all her ideas for the dresses she wears in the third act from her pet bed of marigolds, and how she never dreams of taking part in a first night performance without having previously run the lawn-mower twice round the gravel paths.

Clever creature; you don’t wonder she is labelled a celebrity; any woman who can keep that hat on while using that trowel, has accomplished something!

* * * * *

I didn’t feel like hoeing just then, no matter what the cost of my gardening outfit. The moment seemed to call for non-strenuous occupation that would admit of leisurely movement and unlimited pauses with nothing doing—which is what I find a mind like mine requires.

Of course there was plenty of hoeing waiting to be done, there always is; I never knew a soil so chock-full of weed-seeds as ours seems to be, and I never knew a place where folks are so little worried by them. Where things grow as easily as they do about our hills and valleys (and where the angle of the garden is just what ours is), you will find that the native reduces land-labour to the minimum, and nothing is disturbed unless absolutely necessary. Reasonably, if you have left the hoe at the top of the garden, and the top is a hundred feet above the bottom of the garden where you are standing, you think twice before you climb up and fetch it.

As one result of this universal conservation of energy, our local nettle crop is one of the finest in the kingdom, I verily believe.

“Why are those things left standing in every field corner?” I asked a farmer on one occasion, pointing to the usual grey-green waving jungle of weeds.

“They nettles?” he questioned, in surprise; “well, what’s the good of wasting attention on ’em? They don’t hurt no one!”

Incidentally I may say it is always well to criticize the methods employed on other people’s land rather than those practised on your own, since most right-minded employés resent any implication, no matter how politely you wrap it up, that improvement is possible; and if you question the why and wherefore of anything, it may be mistaken for fault-finding in this imaginative age. Hence, unless the handy man chances to be one of exceptional make up, I go farther afield when gleaning information.

One day I watched a man very leisurely inspecting a thistle in a meadow by the weir, and then, with a deliberation that was most restful to a harried, hustled, war-time Londoner, he tenderly and carefully cut it off near the ground with a scythe. After he had decapitated about twenty thistles in this way, he naturally needed a little time for recuperation, and sat down on the river bank to meditate. I hadn’t liked to interrupt him when he was working, because so far as I could roughly estimate, there were thirteen thousand four hundred and fifty-three thistles in the meadow—approximately, you understand—and we don’t work according to trade union hours here; sometimes we start an hour later and leave off an hour earlier, and miss out several in between. But since he had evidently reached his rest-hour—and remembering that one of my own fields was plentifully dotted with thistles at the moment, and feeling quite equal myself to that gentle picturesque swish of the scythe—I asked him whether that process killed the thistle right out? (My business instinct forbade my wasting time on the job if it would all have to be done over again later on.)

No, he said, he didn’t think as how it would kill the thistles right out.

Then why did he do it that way? I asked, instead of spudding the thing right up by the root?

“Well”—and he scratched his head thoughtfully—“doing it like this jest diskerridges of ’em a bit, and isn’t sech a deluge o’ trouble as mooting ’em right out would be.” And with that he promptly dropped thistles, and proceeded to discuss the fiendishness of the Germans.

He had a long talk (there wasn’t room for me to say anything), and gave recipes for annihilating completely everything connected with them (excepting thistles; I presume they have some; they deserve a good crop, anyhow), finishing up with—

“But thur—what I says about ’em I won’t exackly repeat in yer presence, m’m; for my wife often says to me, ‘It won’t do nobody no pertickler good,’ she says, ‘if you gets yerself shut out o’ Heaven by yer langidge,’ she says, ‘just to spite they Huns, what don’t even _hear_ it!’”

For a full two minutes he worked that scythe with real zest, as though onslaughting the enemy.

Perhaps his method is right (in regard to thistles, I mean), perhaps it is wrong; I’ve never gone sufficiently deep into the subject to be competent to pass an opinion. But I do know that the larger proportion of handy men who have honoured me with their patronage (though there are conspicuous exceptions) invariably weed on these lines of least resistance, and “jest diskerridge ’em”—though I own it takes a lot to discourage _our_ weeds!

* * * * *

Not feeling like diskerridging weeds at the moment, I asked Ursula to suggest some occupation for my idle hands, though I didn’t put it like that; I inquired which of the many jobs needing urgent attention I had better tackle next. (It came to the same thing in the end; but instead of advertising my natural indolence, I hoped it would convey an impression that I was rushing pell-mell through an endless succession of tasks.)

Ursula was sitting on a pile of logs under a big fir tree inside the orchard gate—oh yes, there are firs in the orchard, and lilacs, and daffodils, and snowdrops, and a huge Wellingtonia, and a trickle of water with forget-me-nots and mint on its brink; we’re not at all particular about classification. She was darning a stocking, and it seemed a lengthy job. Not that there was any large, vulgar gash in the stocking; it was merely suffering from general war-time debility, and was one of those that you can go on and on darning, and still find more thin places to run up and down.

Have you ever noticed what a snare a stocking of this description can be? You can sit at it for an hour or so, until it seems easier to go on darning it than to bestir yourself to do anything else. In the end, you haven’t accomplished much, considering the time you’ve been about it, but you have acquired a large dose of the virtuous and exemplary feeling that is always the outcome of stocking-darning.

Ursula had got like that, though I wouldn’t have you think I under-estimated her efforts, for it was my apparel she was darning.

“I often think that a garden embodies all the philosophy of life,” she replied to my query, in a detached way, as she closely inspected the stocking foot drawn over her hand, in order to pounce upon any further signs of impending dissolution.

“I seem to fancy I’ve heard that——”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt someone has said it before me. I’ve noticed over and over again that people plagiarize my really cleverest remarks before I’ve actually had time to say them myself; and I think something ought to be done to prevent the infringement of copyright in this barefaced way. But all the same, whether anyone has, or has not, already helped themselves to this unique creation of my brain, the fact remains that I thought it out for myself, alone and unaided. And the more I meditate upon it, the more I notice what heaps of things in the garden resemble life.”

“As for example——?”

“Well, slugs, for instance, and the bindweed, and the rabbits, and the broad beans. They all seem to typify that here we have no abiding anything.”

I agreed mournfully, as I thought of the succulent, hopeful-looking scarlet runners that the slugs had eaten right through the tender main stems close to the ground. It was a sad awakening for us the day we found a few score of limp and dying remains, where over-night we had watered as promising a row of youngsters as one could have wished to see. To our grieving spirits, it seemed as though it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if they had eaten the leaves and left us the stems, at least more leaves might have grown, whereas now——!

And the bindweed—where could you find a more striking analogy to original sin? Flaunting beautiful flowers (which I greatly love), yet all the while spreading wicked roots out of sight, choking everything it lays hold of, turning up in the most unlooked-for places—but there is no need to write more under this heading; a healthy crop of bindweed (and I never knew one that wasn’t most irritatingly healthy) could give points to a preacher every Sunday in the year, and then have enough to spare for the week-night services. And when he had done with bindweed, he could start afresh on mint.

Rabbits, again, are dear things, with an appeal that is quite different from that of any other of the wild things. Sometimes in the past, when I have been doomed to sit for an hour or so in the airlessness and weariness of crowded hall or place of entertainment, or in the loneliness of a congested social function, where everybody is too buzzingly busy with “being social” to have time to say a word to anyone, I just switch my mind right off the glare and the heat and the stuffiness and the superficiality and the heartlessness, and take a look at the little orchard adjoining the cottage garden, and for just a minute I watch the rabbits, nibbling the grass, sitting up on their hind legs to get a better view of any possible enemy-approach, and scampering back to cover in the coppice with a bobbing of white tails, at the least suspicion of danger. To a woman there is something very touching about the timidity of these little brown things. I always wish I could make them understand that I am their friend and not their enemy—but this is a difficult matter, because there is the small white dog to be considered in the compact, and there is no sentimentality about him where rabbits are concerned!

I wouldn’t be without these little furry families in the coppice, but oh, I do wish they would leave the young cabbages alone, or at any rate spare the tenderest of the green leaves! It is a bit damping even to ardour like ours to be greeted, when we arrive from town, by a gardener waving a deprecating hand over rows of hardy cabbage stumps bereft of leaves. At such times it seems as though it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if they had eaten the stems and left us the leaves, at least we could have cooked them, whereas now——!

Rabbits certainly emphasize the fact that life grows thistles as well as figs.

* * * * *

With regard to the beans, it is difficult to be philosophical. I can be to some extent resigned when my misfortunes are handed out to me by Nature, but it is a different thing when they are manufactured for me (at my expense, too) by my fellow-creatures.

On the whole, I cannot speak too highly of the men who have worked for me about the Flower-patch; I have been exceedingly well served, but now and again one comes upon misfortune, and on one occasion I found I had engaged an Ananias of the most proficient type. During his brief _régime_ the weeds thrived apace, while the choicest bulbs and flowers took on a world of diskerridgement. When the black pansies, and the heliotrope Spanish iris feathered with white and yellow, and the rare delphiniums, and the yellow arum lily disappeared at one fell swoop, Ananias shook his head sadly and put their defalcation down to the rush of the rain and the angle of the earth.

“Everything do simply run off this soil!” he explained.

Quite true; it certainly did. And two legs invariably ran with it.

And the vegetables seemed as subject to diskerridgement as the flowers, though it was always referred to as “blight.”

There were the broad beans, for instance; I had given him two quarts of seed, and indicated where I would like them planted. They were a special prize strain that had been sent to me by a famous firm of seedsmen, who had been moved to this generous deed on reading some of the chronicles of the Flower-patch when they were first published in _The Woman’s Magazine_. The head of the firm wrote me that they were a new mammoth variety, and they would be pleased if I would try them in my cottage garden.

We planned great things when those broad beans should be ready. Two quarts would make about ten rows, we reckoned, quite a goodly plantation for us; and we decided that as we should have plenty, considering our small household, we would be extravagant and gather our first dishful when they were quite young and in that deliciously tender state that is unknown to the town dweller, who seldom sees a broad bean till it is a tough old patriarch, and in such a condition considers it a coarse vegetable.

It was a cold day in February when I handed the seed to Ananias; we were returning to London the same day, so we beguiled part of the long journey discussing whether that first dish should be accompanied by parsley sauce and boiled ham, or whether to fry the ham and have the broad beans given one turn in the frying-pan after they were boiled.

The subject seemed more and more vital the further we got along the road, for we couldn’t get luncheon baskets (no, not the War; it was before that event, and due to one of the many cheerful strikes with which our pre-war existence was punctuated), and the bananas and Banbury cakes we purchased _en route_ seemed woefully unsatisfying. Hence, it was pleasant, but very tantalizing, to contemplate that dish of beans, and we finally agreed that the ham should be fried, and that we would dig some new potatoes specially for the occasion. We sat and meditated on that meal, as the winter landscape flew past us, and the more we meditated the more violently hungry we got.

You see, the beans really assumed more than ordinary importance.

But alas, when bean time came, all that decorated the bean plot was one miserable row of wretched-looking stalks.

“It’s that thur blight agin,” remarked Ananias; “I watched it a-comin’ up the valley.”

“But why didn’t you pinch off the tops, if they were showing blight?” I inquired; “then they would have made fresh shoots lower down.”

He shook his head and looked at me pityingly: “We don’t do our beans like that a-here.”

“And where are all the other rows,” I asked; “I suppose blight didn’t carry off roots and all of the remainder?”

“No, ’twere slugs, I warrant, or birds, or else the seed were stale, maybe.”

Ursula carefully turned over the rest of the ground later on, but never a glimmer of a benighted bean did she find.

Still, Ananias was, as usual, quite willing to be obliging. “My beans has done uncommon well this year,” he continued. “It’s jest all accordin’ how it takes ’em; sometimes mine does well and t’other people’s doesn’t; and then agin t’other people’ll have a fine crop and I won’t have a bean. I can let you have some o’ mine if you like. I know you’re powerful fond o’ broad beans. I allus say you’re jest like my missus.” (I’m sorry I haven’t a portrait of stout, unwashed, sixty-five-year-old Sapphira to reproduce; without it you cannot possibly understand how pleased I was!)

He brought over half a bushel, explaining that he had to charge twopence a pound more than other people, as these were specially large and good yielders, that were expensive in the first place.

They were remarkably fine beans, indeed as fine as I have ever seen; and I wrote to the firm of seedsmen and told them their mammoth variety had proved all they claimed for it.

I conclude the miserable row in my garden was a twopenny packet bought from the travelling huckster who peddles seeds around the villages at suitable seasons.

* * * * *

These instances are sufficient to indicate the trend of Ursula’s thoughts when she started to philosophize on the garden. She interrupted her valuable remarks, however, to exclaim: “Do look at that wench!” And Virginia might well be looked at! Her exertions had turned her the colour of a peony; down her face streamed copious “extract of forehead.” The clipping mania had got thorough hold of her, and she was trying to trim every hedge about the place, leaving in her wake a trail of clippings for someone else to clear up—as is the way with all first-class amateurs.

The next task pointed out itself. Ursula got a birch broom, while I trundled the wheelbarrow out of the tool barn; and seeing that there was already a pile of greenstuff waiting disposal, I started a bonfire, while Ursula swept up and supplied extra fuel.

I feel sorry for the town dweller; he knows nothing of the real charm of a bonfire. All too often the word stands to him for nothing more than a mass of damp and decaying leaves that simply won’t burn. He can only attend to it after his return from business, unless he be one of the favoured few in town who have gardens sufficiently large to allow of their keeping regular gardeners. And unfortunately the lighting restrictions of the present day give no real scope to the bonfire maker—even if he has anything worth burning. His dank mass smoulders to death, or he adds paraffin to encourage it, and the neighbours close their windows with meaning violence, while the parish reeks of the obnoxious odour. Seldom has he air enough to fan anything like a good fire; and at length, after burning the dozenth newspaper, and listening to minute statistical particularization on the part of his wife regarding the present price of matches, collectively and individually (with deviations _re_ sultanas, lemon soles, kitchen tea, coal-cards, sugar for the charwoman, ½_d._ per lb. for delivery, soda, a financial comparison of pre-war sirloin with modern soup-bones, and the antiquity of the new-laid hen), he flings himself disgustedly indoors again, depositing a layer of greasy town-garden soil and dead leaves on the door-mat, and perchance trailing it up to his dressing-room.

The town bonfire is usually an abomination; the country bonfire is often sheer delight; and the reason for this difference is due to the fact that the shut-in nature of the average town back-plot seldom supplies the good current of air that a bonfire needs to get it going full-swing; and more than this, the refuse that collects in a town garden is often sooty, unsanitary and malodorous. Whereas in the country there is a great diversity of stuff to be burnt, and much of it is delightfully aromatic. Also, the wind that sweeps continually over our hills, for instance, dries up the rubbish pile—unless it be actually raining; we seldom get that dank sodden stuff that is the bane of the town gardener. We can always get a current of air, if not a stiff breeze, to fan the first stages; and being unhampered by the claims of city offices, we can start it in the morning, and keep it going the whole day long. Our only trouble is to get the red-hot mass to slumber through the night; it has such a trick of suddenly bursting out again about 2 A.M., lighting up the cottage in the dark, and flaming forth a vivid beacon worthy of the men of Harlech, and recalling stirring scenes in old romance—only the local constabulary have no poetic leanings, and merely see in it a case for a £10 fine under the Defence of the Realm Act.

I started the bonfire—not with newspapers, these are far too few and precious; why, our very paper bags are smoothed out and treasured in a dresser drawer; some done-with straw and dry leaves make a good beginning, with some of the dead twigs from the larches. If there are laurel clippings to put on next, and there usually are, then success is assured.

Soon the flames were licking up my initial work, and I proceeded to pile on hedge trimmings, the sweepings-up of an apple-tree that had blown down and been sawn up—and how sweet they made the air! Thistles, nettles, brambles, surplus raspberry canes that spring up everywhere, a holly-bush that had lately been cut down, worthless gooseberry bushes, piles of ivy that had been cut from the walls, more barrow-loads of stuff tipped on by Ursula—how the laurel flared and the yew crackled, and one’s eyes smarted as the smoke swept round like a whirlwind and enveloped one at times! I am a great believer in the burning of all refuse vegetation; it does away with so much blight and vermin and plant disease, and clears out mosquito haunts, and is generally sanitary.

Virginia had betaken herself to cooler climes, but Ursula and I worked at that heap, forking on new stuff to stop up flame bursts, till we too were shedding dew from our foreheads, and our hands were almost sore with wielding the heavy forks.

Yet a fascination keeps you at it, till you are smoke-dried and fire-toasted and arm-aching to the last degree. When the shades of evening finally call you in (as a rule, meals are most perfunctory when a bonfire is in progress) you are saturated from head to foot with the bonfire, your very hair has absorbed the time-old pungent odour of the smoke of forest fires.

And maybe months and months afterwards you open a seldom used wardrobe, where old gardening gear and shabby mackintoshes are kept, and suddenly you are overwhelmed with the scent of burning pear and birch leaves and yew; the lure of the woods calls aloud to you; you feel the sweep of the winds on the hills alternating with the great swirls of grey-blue bonfire smoke; the cramped town vanishes, and you are in free open spaces once more——

And all because a certain tweed skirt, or light gardening coat is hanging in the corner of the wardrobe.

* * * * *

If you want a bonfire with a delicious scent that will haunt you with a poignant memory long after its ashes have gone the way of all things, pile up dead apple leaves and twigs, pine needles, beech leaves, the trimmings of the sweet bay bushes, brambles, rose-stalks and larch—and the incense of the forest will be yours, bringing with it a mystic sense of nearness to primæval things that no perfume sold in cut-glass bottles has yet been able to conjure up.

* * * * *

We didn’t wait till sun-down, however, that day; for we were in the most thrilling part of the afternoon forking-up, and our complexions were at their very, _very_ worst, when Abigail tripped out and announced:

“The Rector. . . . Oh, you needn’t worry about your appearance, ma’am. Miss Virginia’s talking to him. . . . Yes, she’s changed _her_ dress, and is telling him just what you look like.”

XV

The Meeting at the Cottage

“I HAVE been wondering,” the Rector began, “if it would be possible for you to let us have a Temperance Meeting here in your cottage? I feel sure it would be productive of good, and we sadly need more aggressive Temperance work in this parish. And a little gathering in a private house would be more of a novelty than one held in the Parish Room, or at the Rectory.”

“A Temperance Meeting!” I repeated, rather hesitatingly, I confess. I knew well enough that there was work waiting to be done in this direction, but whether those who most needed reforming could be got inside my door was quite another matter.

“Oh, but I am not meaning an evening meeting for the purpose of reaching the men themselves,” the Rector explained. “My idea is to have an afternoon Ladies’ Meeting to discuss more particularly the question of prohibition. We might eventually get up a week of meetings in various parts of the district. Only it all wants talking over. There are a number of ladies who would be willing to aid, if only some definite scheme were put before them. If you would issue the invitations, I know they would be only too pleased to come; and we could possibly get a committee appointed as the initial step in the proceedings.”

I saw at once that the idea was a practical one. Quite a goodly handful of ladies would be available from houses dotted here and there upon the hillside. So we made a list of those living near enough to me to be invited.

“Now, have we overlooked anybody?” I said finally, going down the list once more. It included the Manor House and one or two other large country houses where I knew the people would be sympathetic, the rest being cottage-residences and small places inhabited by people of the educated classes, who kept simple, unassuming establishments—some from choice, some because their means were small. In several cases the ladies dispensed with any servant, finding that life’s problems and breakages and fingermarks were much reduced when they did the work themselves!

“By the way, there are two visitors in the place at present, who would like to come, I am sure,” said the Rector, “One is a very nice girl, who has been doing V.A.D. work since the beginning of the War. She is here recruiting after a nervous breakdown; and is boarding at the Jones’s farm—I know she would appreciate an invitation.” I duly wrote down her name.

“And the other, Miss Togsie, is a literary lady, and is lodging with old Mrs. Perkins; do you happen to know her name?”

I had never heard it before.

“Ah! neither had I. But then that would not be remarkable. Only she seemed surprised to think I did not know of her, though, so far as I can ascertain, she has never actually published anything. She is engaged on some book of research, which she regards as an important contribution to the literature of the times, though for the moment the subject has escaped my memory. She is so exceedingly anxious to meet you; in fact, she—er—suggested that I should take her with me to call on you; but I told her that you come down here for rest and quiet, and to escape the conventionalities of society. She is rather a—er—persistent lady, however; and she says her admiration for you is unbounded. So possibly, if you have no objection, it might make a pleasant interlude if she were invited also.”

I was not very anxious to have her, but I agreed, as the Rector seemed to wish it. Still, I am afraid my smile was a trifle ironical, as I tailed the list with her name.

Unfortunately, the very day of the meeting was the one suddenly selected by Abigail’s sister for her wedding; of course, I insisted that Abigail must not miss the function, and sent her back to town the day before. But when the preparations were divided between the three of us, they did not amount to much in the way of extra work; and Ursula made herself responsible for the fresh relays of tea that would be necessary for new arrivals.

As is the custom in the country, everybody walked round the garden to see how the things were coming on, and we all compared notes with each other’s gardens, and, of course, everybody complimented me on the forwardness of my things—as in duty bound, seeing they were drinking my tea!

The V.A.D. proved a delightful girl, very nervous at first, but very appreciative. And as all my other visitors were fully engaged in chatting together in twos and threes, I devoted myself to the shy outsider. The Literary Lady had not yet appeared.

“I come up every day and look over the wall at your flowers,” the girl said. “I believe they’ve done me far more good than the tonic I’ve been taking.”

“I invariably take a dose of them myself, when I’m run down,” I replied. We were wandering around the narrow paths, between the beds edged with pieces of grey stone. The paths were beginning to be weedy; and the garden was a mixture of early and late spring flowers, owing to the undue length of the winter.

But for the V.A.D. there were no imperfections. “I’ve never seen cowslips like these before,” and she stooped and touched them lovingly. “Those mahogany-coloured ones are so rich. And I like the deep reddy-orange ones too. Oh—I like them all!” she added, with a sigh of pleasure. “And when I was ill in London, before they sent me down here, I felt as though I should die if I couldn’t get away somewhere, where there were flowers and sunshine and where the trees and foliage were fresh and clean. Wherever I looked there were grey skies, and dingy houses, and discoloured paint, and dirty streets, and miserable-looking squares and sooty stuff that it was pitiful to call grass, and smoke and mud all the same colour and equally stupefying. Do you think that dirt can get on people’s nerves?”

I nodded. Don’t I know only too well how the grime and gloom and all-pervading sordidness of big cities can get on one’s nerves! Don’t I know how in time they seem to corrode one’s very soul, and dull one’s vision, till faith itself can become clouded, and hope goes, and all one’s work seems of no avail! But the merciful Lord has provided an antidote. It was a Tree He showed at the waters of Marah; and the leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations in more senses than one.

The girl continued her confidences: “When I lay awake at nights with insomnia, I used to shut my eyes and think out the garden I wanted to find. It wasn’t a grand garden, or a gorgeous one that I used to plan—carpet bedding and terraces with beds of geraniums and peacocks would have tired me to arrange in proper style just then. The garden I wanted was the sort of happy place where flowers seem to grow of their own accord with no one to worry them about tidy habits!

“And then, it was quite remarkable, the day after I arrived here, I chanced upon the lane leading to your cottage, and there I saw the very garden I had been so longing for, and the masses of flowers and colour I had been quite hungry to see. I could hardly tear myself away from the little gate. Of course, the florists wouldn’t think much of me for saying it, but although I admire with real wonder the magnificent blooms they exhibit at shows, I would rather have that piece of rocky wall, with its wallflowers on the top, than the most expensive orchids they could show me. But perhaps all this seems rather childish to you?”

Yet it didn’t! I knew exactly what she meant; and every flower-lover will understand it too. There are times when I go a good deal farther than the V.A.D., and actually object to some of the improvements on Nature horticulturists think they can make. What is gained by trying to produce rhododendrons looking like gypsophila, while at the same time they are trying to get gypsophila looking like pæonies? What purpose is served in the modern craze for getting every flower to look like any other flower excepting itself? While I don’t mean to imply that I am so narrow as to object to attempts at horticultural development, there certainly are limits to desirable expansion—as Shakespeare very well knew.

But I had no time to say more, for as she was speaking I caught sight in the distance of a stalwart, aggressive-looking female, with an armful of MSS. and walking-stick clasped to her waistbelt, and clad in a long, loose, tussore silk coat (we were all wearing them short at the moment) that she clutched to her chest with her other hand, as it had lost its fastenings, and was threatening to blow away. Her hat was of the fluffy “girlie” description, somewhat bizarre in shape, which looked preposterous above the lady’s mature locks, more especially as she had put it on hind part front, not even bothering herself to ascertain its compass points.

Miss Togsie was blandly unconscious of any incongruity in her personal appearance, and entered the gate with the assured step of “mind quite oblivious of matter.” Precipitating herself on Ursula—the only hatless person in sight, hence evidently not a fellow guest—she exclaimed in a strident voice, “The Editor of _The Woman’s Magazine_, I believe? _So_ glad to meet you. I’ve been _longing_ to know you. _So_ kind of you to ask me to this _delightful_ gathering——” etc.

Now, as I told Ursula later, if she had been a true friend, she would merely have smiled sweetly and wafted the new arrival into the house, and silenced her with refreshments. Instead of which, she meanly disclaimed all editorial connections, and piloted her up the garden to me. Whereupon we began all over again. I waited patiently till she reached a semicolon, and then invited her to come indoors and have some tea.

“No tea for _me_, thank you!” she exclaimed, in tones of stern disapproval. “I never touch tea.”

“Perhaps you would like some milk and a sandwich?”

“Oh, no! I never take flesh foods of any description. I adhere strictly to the fruit diet which Nature has so bountifully provided for our use. If you happen to have a banana, or a few muscatels——” I hadn’t.

“It’s of no consequence,” she said, with an air of kindly tolerance for my shortcomings. “I’m perfectly happy here under the blue dome of heaven.” My other guests seemed to have had enough of her already, and were making their way towards the house, as it was nearly time to start the meeting; but Virginia linked her arm in that of the V.A.D., and followed close at my heels; for her, the lady promised to be interesting.

“Oh, what adorable kroki!” the newcomer went on, without any break, apostrophising a few late crocuses that were already looking jaded. “And those daisies! I do so _love_ daisies, don’t you? ‘Wee modest crimson-tipped flowers’—you remember the poet’s allusion, of course? So appropriate.” The flowers she was pointing at with her knotty walking-stick were particularly large, buxom-looking red double daisies, a prize variety, that not even the imagination of a poet could have described as “wee”!

“It’s wonderful how literature opens one’s eyes to the beauties of nature. I always say ‘Read the poets,’ then it will not matter whether you stay in town or country, nature will be an open book to you.” (Undoubtedly the Literary Lady had arrived; and she was bent either on improving or on impressing us!) “The poets take you into the very _heart_ of things. ‘A primrose by a river’s brim’; where can you find a truer picture of the simple wayside flower? And isn’t that an exquisite line, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’? I entirely agree with Shakespeare in this” (which was nice of her!); “it is just as I was saying, it really doesn’t matter whether you know a single flower individually—or whether you have ever seen a flower, in fact—all nature can be yours. I consider it criminal to neglect the poets. Wherever the eye wanders,” she went on, “it recalls some great truth that has been crystallised for us by literary men” (evidently the flowers themselves were of small count; all that mattered was what pen-and-ink could make out of them).

“And Ladysmocks all silver white.” It was evident that she was warming to the work and going farther afield, for here the stick took a dangerous sweep round in mid-air (Virginia saved her head by dodging it), and was now pointing into the copse the other side of the garden-wall, where the anemones were still in bloom. “I simply revel in Lady’s Smocks, don’t you?” she said ardently to Virginia, and then smiled expansively into the copse, though there wasn’t a solitary Lady’s Smock there.

“For my own part, I must say I prefer Doxies,” said Virginia sweetly. “‘The Doxy over the dale,’ as Shakespeare so beautifully expresses it. Don’t you just _love_ them?”

The V.A.D. had turned her back on us and was studying the distant hills.

“Virginia,” I interpolated hurriedly, for I scented trouble immediately ahead, “isn’t that the Rector coming up the lane? Then we must be getting indoors.”

But the Literary Lady had not nearly said all she had come intending to say; so she told me as we walked to the house that she herself was engaged on a most exhaustive literary work, entitled, “The Cosmic Evidences of Woman’s Supremacy.”

“Yes,” I said, in a blank tone of voice that wasn’t intended to commit me to anything. I’ve handled many similarly exhaustive MSS. in my time, and I’ve met many authoresses of the same, and my one terror was lest she should start to give me a detailed synopsis of each chapter. But fortunately we reached the house before she could get fairly launched.

* * * * *

After the opening hymn and prayer, the Rector briefly sketched his idea in calling the meeting together, and, after reminding us how desirable it was at a time like this that some active campaign should be set afoot to combat the drunkenness that had been such a bane to our land, he asked if any ladies who had suggestions to make would kindly speak briefly and to the point. Hardly had he sat down before the Literary Lady was on her feet urging upon us all the necessity for giving up our inebriate habits! You would have thought she was addressing loafers inside a public-house.

I sat as patiently as I could waiting for her to sit down and give place to someone else, who, at least, knew whom they were addressing. But next moment I found, to my amazement, that she was lecturing us on the advantages of a fruitarian diet, assuring us that most of the evils flesh is heir to (including drunkenness) would be done away with if we only chained our appetites to fruit. She was blissfully unaware that the cause of all the trouble in our district was—cider! After every form of food that was not fruit had been abused, she passed on—by a transition that seemed easy to her, but unaccountable to everyone else—to the question of woman’s suffrage, and we learnt that another cause for drunkenness was to be found in the fact that women had had no votes. And then it dawned upon me that we had let ourselves in for an afternoon with some irresponsible crank.

It really seemed as though she meant to go on for ever. The Rector’s gentle and courteous attempts to stem the rushing torrent were not of the slightest avail. He tried to interpolate a remark now and again, but she never even heard him; she was addressing us at the very top of her voice. Of course he ought to have stopped her at the very outset; but then the situation was one he had never before been called upon to face in the whole of his seventy years; hers was the first female voice to be raised in our parish in defiance of the Rector!

Equally, of course, I ought to have stopped her; but one hesitates to take the initiative in such a case when there is a chairman, and eventually I let matters get quite beyond me. I did rise at the back of the room and try to ask a few questions, but all in vain; the speaker never paused, and at last I meekly sat down again, while Virginia and Ursula, with the V.A.D. between them, suffocated in their handkerchiefs and showed distinct signs of getting out of hand! Besides what _can_ anyone do under such circumstances? I asked Ursula, who once attended election meetings, what it was usual to do, and she said, “You just turn them out when they talk too much.” But who was to turn her out? And how do you set about it?

It was evident from her absurd and illogical statements that neither the Fruitarians nor the Woman’s Suffrage party owned her or would have authorised her to advocate their claims. She was merely one of those women one meets occasionally who take up every new craze that comes along, and get on their feet and speak about their latest hobby, in season and out of season, having not the slightest sense of proportion, and of the fitness of things. Such a woman loves to hear her own voice, and imagines that other people love to hear it too!

After half an hour of this sort of thing the lady of the Manor took her departure—not very quietly either! As I stepped outside in the porch to bid her a mournful “Good-bye,” she pressed my hand and murmured—

“You poor dear! Do let me know who finally chokes her!”

* * * * *

How we should have silenced her eventually I don’t know, but the matter was taken out of our hands by no less important a personage than Johnny, the boy who delivered the bread from the village shop.

Unable to find any Abigail at the kitchen door, he had come along to the other door to know how many loaves I required. From my seat in the room I tried to indicate, by dumb pantomime, that I wanted one loaf; Miss Smith caught sight of him, and remembering that she was two miles away from any bread if he overlooked her, she told him in a clear voice not to forget to leave her a loaf. Then everyone else in the room woke up to the fact that Johnny was outside, and with one accord they all asked him if he had remembered them, or told him how many loaves to leave, and no one troubled in the slightest whether it interfered with the speaker or not. In fact, they seemed to enjoy the clatter they were making.

Johnny, being attacked by so many voices at once, stood on the doorstep and addressed the room stolidly and respectfully—

“I’ve lef’ your loaf on the window-ledge, Miss Primkins; an’ I put two for you in the fork of the apple-tree, Miss Robinson, so’s the dog can’t get at it, as he’s loose; an’ Miss Jones, your’n is on the garden seat; and I’ve a-put Mrs. Wilson’s a-top of the wood-pile wiv a bit of paper under it”—(undue favouritism to Mrs. Wilson, we all thought!)—“an’ I’ve lef’ your nutmegs and soda and coffee on the doorstep, Miss White; and I driv a cow out of your garden, what had got in, Miss Parker; the gate was lef’ open; but he’s latched up all right now——”

At this intelligence the room gave a general shuffle, preparatory to a stampede. Why, a cow might have got into every garden! Who could tell? And only those who have cherished gardens in the country know what terrible import lurked in the words, “The gate was lef’ open!”

The Rector, seeing where matters were trending, said we would close with a hymn. Before he had given out more than one line, Ursula did what she had never done before, and has never done since—raised the tune! She said it was sheer hysterics made her do so. At any rate we all took it up vigorously, because we saw the Literary Lady was trying to add a postscript to her previous remarks. It’s true, Ursula started us on a six-lined tune, whereas the verses were only four lines each, but I fortunately discovered it in time, and repeated the last two lines to save the situation.

The people all left hurriedly as soon as the Benediction had been pronounced; most of them looking unutterable things at me for having let them in for such a time! The Literary Lady alone seemed to have enjoyed herself, and went away leaving the bundle of MSS. she had brought, after telling me that she intended to call on me the very next afternoon and bring me “The Cosmic Evidences,” as she felt sure it would be the very thing for my magazine. The unkindest cut of all, however, was the farewell remark made by the Vicar’s niece, as she was adjusting her bonnet-strings—

“I can’t think why on earth you ever asked that individual to address us; but I suppose she is some personal friend of yours?”

* * * * *

When the two girls and I were left alone with the general disorder that always prevails after one’s guests have gone, Ursula made some tea, and Virginia brought in what was left of the festal fare, and we sat around the fire and ate in melancholy silence.

“I’m going to town by the very first train to-morrow,” I said at last.

“So ’m I!” fervently ejaculated the other two in unison. “And may I never set eyes or ears on that fruit creature again,” added Virginia, as she set down her plate, with an air of a pain in her chest, after her sixth cucumber sandwich.

But, though I escaped the lady’s next call, I had not got to the end of her. She sent an avalanche of MSS. to my office, and called persistently in person. Howbeit, she never was troubled to walk beyond the inquiry office, and her MSS. were always returned to her with the utmost promptitude.

* * * * *

Some weeks later Virginia and I, after doing some shopping in the stores, turned into the refreshment-room for lunch. I do not know any place where a more varied assortment of feminine idiosyncrasies thrust themselves upon one’s notice than in the ladies’ luncheon-room; neither do I know any place where you can hear, within a given space of time, more particulars of the births, marriages, ailments and deaths—plus a wealth of intervening data—of people you know nothing about, than in that self-same room.

We had hardly taken our seats at a table before we were accompanying our next-door neighbour to a dentist, she being in a state of _complete_ nervous prostration (full symptoms given), and having four teeth extracted (_most_ obstinate one that came out in eleven separate pieces) with gas that wouldn’t “take” (italicised description of what the victim underwent, and was conscious of, in her half-gone condition). After this we dallied through an exceedingly comprehensive catalogue of what she had been able to take in the way of nourishment since the momentous occasion; and finally received, with breathless interest, the important information as to the exact date when she would be once more fully equipped for dinner-parties.

On our right two more were discussing, with gusto, the doings (none of them, apparently, what she ought to have done) of a bride who had recently entered their family.

Our own corner of the room was so engaging that we did not notice the newcomers who were finding seats at other tables. But suddenly, above the general chatter, there arose the sound of a strident voice that there was no possibility of mistaking. Virginia and I gasped simultaneously; and there, a short distance away from us (though, fortunately with its back towards us), we beheld the fluffy hat (rightside front this time), above a screw of hair, and the long tussore coat of recent blessed memories! The Literary Lady had a friend with her, but obviously the friend didn’t count for much, she hadn’t a chance; at most she only squeezed in a word when the other made a semi-pause for breath. We sat spell-bound, and this is what we heard: