Part 37

"It looks much neater, certainly. I wonder, now, have you let Griggs have any time for the vegetables lately?"

"Do you know, sir, the uninitiated might mistake you for a most cold-hearted and callous parent. If you lived up to the ideal, you would be saying beautiful things about my industry, and the conversion of wilderness into rose, and Griggs's, well, not his conversion, but he has done more work this last year than for the twenty before. And you would be saying that the five pounds--"

"Ah! I thought we were coming to that. It's quite gone, I suppose?"

"Gone! Goodness me! and so has a good deal of its successor. But it is all right. I practically went the year round with that first fiver. All I am doing now is for next year, you see. I have drawn you up a statement of accounts and you will see that I even kept a little money for summer bulbs, though they can only come on next year. Which was generous of the first year to the second, you will perceive. But I wanted so many things that it was too late to buy last autumn or I did not know of them. And I have begged and borrowed as well as bought. Don't you think the garden has grown?"

"Yes, Mary, I really do; and I conclude from your having entered upon the second five pounds that you want it, and are not going to resign the situation."

"I don't think you can do without me."

And his Reverence said, after a moment,

"I don't want to try."

The little statement of accounts that I formally laid upon the study table was as follows:

Bulbs £2 0 0

Seeds £1 10 0

Odd Plants 0 3 6

Roses 0 13 6

Geranium Cuttings 0 6 0

Summer Bulbs 0 7 0

£5 0 0

His Reverence eyed it critically.

"How neatly it fits in. You have not been driven to arrange matters with the usual feminine etcetera."

"Because I have paid those etceteras myself."

"Really, but what were the etceteras? I thought they were always unknown quantities in ladies' accounts."

"That is one of the delusions of menkind. My etceteras were all the pennies paid for hampers coming and going, for labels, for scissors, three shillings those, without whose aid I could never have cut my way through the summer; they hold the flowers as you cut and save much backache. Then for sulphur, for quassia chips, for bast, for--"

"Hold! I will never ask what a woman's etcetera means again. I see it is much the most important part of the whole account. I wish they always paid it themselves. But why did you?"

"Oh, because, because five pounds is so little, you can have no idea how little, to buy everything with."

"Yes, but you started away with the idea it was a great deal."

"I said I could put some flowers in the garden with it anyway, and so I have. Even the Others allow that."

"Well, shall we say six pounds for this next year?"

"Will you really, sir? Oh, that is good! Now I shall go at once and order a pound's worth of peonies. There was such an enticing advertisement in this morning's Standard, and I have been resisting temptation, because I really had to buy herbaceous plants and a good many bulbs. They have made such a hole. But in time, you see, in time the garden will get quite full."

Yes, peonies with the delicious description of "blush rose," "deep carmine," "snowy queen" had held my thoughts for some time. That front border ought to be devoted to all varieties of flowering shrubs, and in time it should be. There was plenty of room for my peonies; so they were quickly ordered and the border made as good for them as I could manage. They like being well-treated. But when I thought of the watering next year my heart failed me. Something must be done.