If I were to tell of the tea-roses grown here, they would fill a chronicle by itself, though only a few of the older kinds, such as safrano, bon silene, and perle, are favourites.  Mrs. Puffin says that some of them, the great shrubs, are wintered out-of-doors, and others are lifted, like the lemon balms, and kept in the dry, light cellar in tubs.

But oh!  Mrs. Evan, you must go and see Mrs. Marchant’s lilies!  They are growing as freely as weeds among the uncut grass, and blooming as profusely as the bell-lilies in Opal Farm meadows!  And all the spring bulbs are also grown in this grass that lies between the shorn grass paths, and in autumn when the tops are dead and gone it is carefully burned over and the turf is all the winter covering they have.

Does the grass look ragged and unsightly?  No, because I think that it is cut lightly with a scythe after the spring bulbs are gone and that the patient woman, whose life the garden is, keeps the tallest seeded grasses hand trimmed from between the lily stalks!

Ah, but how that garden lingers with me, and the single glimpse I caught of the deep dark eyes of its mistress as they looked out of a vine-clad window toward the sky!

I have made a list of the plants that are possible for my own permanent bed of fragrant flowers and leaves, that I may enjoy them, and that the Infant may have fragrant memories to surround all her youth and bind her still more closely to the things of outdoor life.

I chanced upon a verse of Bourdillon’s the other day.  Do you know it?

  “Ah! full of purest influence
     On human mind and mood,
   Of holiest joy to human sense
     Are river, field, and wood;
   And better must all childhood be
   That knows a garden and a tree!”

XV

THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)

Oaklands, September 1. So you have been away and in going discovered the possibilities of growing certain pinks and carnations out-of-doors that, in America at least, are usually considered the winter specialties of a cool greenhouse!

We too have been afield somewhat, having but now returned from a driving trip of ten days, nicely timed as to gardens and resting-places until the last night, when, making a false turn, ten o’clock found us we did not know where and with no prospect of getting our bearings.

We had ample provisions for supper with us, including two bottles of ginger ale; no one knew that we were lost but ourselves and no one was expecting us anywhere, as we travel quite con amore on these little near-by journeys of ours.  The August moon was big and hot and late in rising; there was a rick of old hay in a clean-looking field by the roadside that had evidently been used as winter fodder for young cattle, for what remained of it was nibbled about the