Part 24

"Next year! my dear. I am wanting some flowers for to-night."

"To-night! Oh, dear, let me think. Why won't the things make haste? You must have something, of course."

What was there? A good many things in bud, but had they been out I could not have cut them. Just the one first specimen! To cut from a plant you need such a big show, and all the tall perennials were no good anyway for the table decoration. The blue cornflowers were coming; the godetias held promising buds of pinkiness; the Shirley poppies, too, and the sweet-peas; but for to-night! Everything was for to-morrow. Down the garden we walked, hope always deferred, and beyond the garden shone a field of brilliantly deep red. I caught my breath. "Isn't it lovely? It is old Mason's saint-foin; let us take some. And see, there are white daisies in the hay there, mine aren't out yet. And with grasses, those lovely, wavy grasses! don't you think that will do?"

The table did look lovely, but small thanks to my garden, I felt; though the Other One cared not for that, and comforted me by saying that gardening had certainly developed my resources if not the flowers.

Nature's garden is at its best in June.

The wild rose and honeysuckle scent the hedges, the tall white daisies shine in the grass, the ruddy chickweed, with the setting sun behind, glows like the evening clouds; and the tall, dainty, white meadow-sweet offers itself to one's hand. Were it a garden flower we should prize it almost as we do gypsophila. But Nature does not mean her favourites to be promoted to the drawing-room. Their rustic beauty fades at once, and it seems truly unkind to cut so short their joyous sunny day.

* * * * *

The dinner-table that had caused me so much anxiety was specially needed for an American friend of one of the Others. She greeted the pretty effect with, "My! how cunning! Do all these pretty things grow in your garden, Mistress Mary?"

"In mine and Nature's," I added.

"You have a little rhyme about Mary and her garden, haven't you? And her lamb, too. Have you a lamb?"

"Oh, yes," said one of the Others, "she has a lamb, the new version of that rhyme, too, 'with coat as black as soot.'"

But what she meant, or why I grew hot, it passes my wisdom to say.

"Say now, do you grow nightingales in your garden, Mistress Mary? I assure you, sir," turning to his Reverence, "I have never yet compassed an introduction to that much-vaunted British institooshon, the nightingale. I am just crazy till I hear those liquid tones, the jug jug and jar jar: such vurry ugly equivalents they sound to me for thrilling notes, but the best, I conclude, our poor speech can do in imitation of that divine melody."

When our friend had quite finished--I noticed she landed herself without fear in the longest of sentences, and brought them always with much aplomb to the neatest of conclusions, an accomplishment in which she must find the majority of her English cousins sadly deficient--his Reverence promised her the wished-for concert; and he further dilated on the beauties represented by jug jug and jar jar, until she assured him that with him for her guide she would face that dark and lonely walk of Mistress Mary's--she meant my lime trees--where doubtless she would find a blue or white lady flitting past, with a sigh, wasn't it? for some recalcitrant lover.

However, I noticed she walked off later with the Young Man, who dropped in after dinner, and she asked him all about the jug jug and jar jar with ever-increasing animation.

It certainly was very cool that night, as it can be in June even after a hot day. We looked round to send Jim for shawls, but Jim had vanished, to his work, no doubt. We strolled down the lime walk to see if the nightingales would oblige us, which I doubted, as nightingales are as careful of their throats in a cool wind as are prima donnas.

"You really mustn't talk," I heard the Young Man say.

"Land's sake! but do they want it all their own way? Though who could talk when the whole night is throbbing with beauty? Just look at that intense blue vault above us, and the calm stars shimmering down on us. Say! doesn't it make you feel just too awfully small for anything? You don't feel inclined to get up and preach now, do you? Just shut your eyes and listen; that's about all one can do."

The figures wandered up and down under the overhanging lime boughs, two and two, and presently the black and white ones ahead of us stopped. When we wandered off again somehow we had changed partners, and Mamie was arm-in-arm with her special Other One and the Young Man was walking with me.

"I had such a lot I wanted to talk to you about," he began. This sounded interesting, but he seemed unable to get further.

"About the Sunday school?" I asked gently, for we were still listening for the nightingale.

It was almost a cross "No" that he muttered as we passed Mamie and her friend.

"Oh, I know," I suggested; "it is about the garden. You haven't been helping me in my garden for weeks and weeks. What can one talk of better than a garden? I think it is the most interesting subject, and you must want to know how the nurslings are turning out, now they are started in real life."

I suppose Mamie had caught the word garden, for she began to sing in a very high thread-of-silver voice,

"If love's gardener sweet were I, I would cull the stars for thy pleasure."

"Say, tall and reverend sir, can you reach a star? Look how they twinkle!"

The Young Man is so very English I half feared he would not understand how to take her, but Mamie's freedom was infectious.

"All the stars are not up there," he said, "fortunately for my arms. They are twinkling under these trees to-night."