Part 8

"Because they form a complete garden in February and March--there!"

"A complete garden! How wonderful. Doesn't anyone know? Doesn't Griggs?"

"I haven't asked him, of course he wouldn't know. Here he is, we will see what he says. Griggs, do you know what flower is called hellebore?"

Griggs had no spade and no mud handy; he was very much nonplussed.

"El-bore!--did you say? Whoi, el-bore? Don't seem to have 'eeurd of 'em before; not by that name leastways. You never can tell in these days; lot o' noo-fangled words they call 'em. Oi might know it right 'nuff if you could show me. Dessay it's a furriner. I must be goin'."

He wandered down the garden. There was not much I could give him to do, but I knew from my gardening books that he should be trimming trees, or marking those to come down, or cutting stakes, and lots of other useful things. I possessed no woods, or groves, or copses, however, so I gave Griggs over unreservedly to his Reverence, and he dug and banked up celery.

"Shall I write and ask my mother?" said the Young Man. "She is quite a gardener, you know; and when they divide up roots--as they do, don't they?--she would send you some, I am sure. Geraniums and fuchsias and--and lilies. They always divide them up, don't they? and throw away half."

"I don't think they throw away half, not always. But would she really? It would be awfully kind; and I might send her things when I had anything to send. Only I don't want geraniums; I can't bear them, and old Griggs has filled our one and only frame with nothing else. They seem to me a most unnecessary flower."

I spoke in my ignorance, and I learnt the use of geraniums later on.

His Reverence's Young Man never smiled when I spoke of sending things back to his mother; perhaps he did inside him, for she had a lovely garden and half a dozen gardeners, but still was chief there. I was overcome when I paid her a visit and remembered my offer; but again I spoke in my ignorance and thought it showed the right gardener's spirit, and perhaps it did.

His Reverence's Young Man grew to take the greatest interest in gardening. He was one of my first converts; but I learnt about hellebore from someone else.

* * * * *

And now the Master must be introduced. I cannot tell what particular month he came into my garden, but I remember when I first went into his.

He had a genius for flowers. I do not know if he looked at children and animals with that light of fatherly love in his eyes, but I think it must have been there for all things that needed his care and protection. Flowers, however, were his "dream children."

His was no ideal garden, and he had never written about it. It was scarcely larger or more blessed by fate than mine, but was as perfect as could be. He knew each flower intimately; he had planted each shrub, and I never met a weed or a stone on his borders. He had but little glass, and no groves and copses and woods, or heather, or pine, or any unfair advantages in that way; but when I looked at his herbaceous border in the autumn I could not help thinking of harvest decorations. Such a wealth of colour was piled up, it hardly seemed possible it could all be growing on the spot. From early spring to late autumn a succession of brilliant blooms reigned one after another in that border; to look upon it was indeed "seeing of the labour of one's hands and being satisfied."

And he had said, "There is no reason why you should not have it too."

I think that border sowed the first seeds of gardening love in my heart.

"But when you came here was it like this?" I asked.

"It was a pretty bad wilderness," he said with a look round.

"Oh! things take such a time," I groaned.

"I have been here twenty-five years. I have planted nearly everything you see, except the big trees."

"Twenty-five years! But I!--I can't begin planting things for twenty-five years hence. It is too bad of one's predecessors to leave one nothing but weeds and stones and Griggs!"

"Yes. Well, you have got to make things better for your successors. Not but what you can get results of some sort under twenty-five years. All this"--and he waved his hand to that wonderful border--"comes, at least comes in part, with but eighteen months' careful tending."

Even eighteen months seemed to my impatient spirit too long; I wished for a fairy wand. But fairy effects have a way of vanishing like the frost pictures on the window pane.

"Well, if ever I try to make our wilderness blossom like the rose I will just grow perennial things and pop them in and have done with it."

At which the Master laughed.

"Oh, will you? I don't think I shall come to admire your garden then. Why are you so afraid of time? You are young. But I suppose that is the reason."

After I had made the plunge we talked again on this matter.