"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

D

Daffodils always make me glad. From the moment their strong, blue-green blades pierce the grass, they give one a feeling of strength, vigour, activity and determination to be up and doing, unmindful of wind or weather; in fact, using all for their own purpose, bending circumstances to their own development.

And when the big golden bell bursts its sheath of pale green it does it with fine independence, and then swings on its strong stem, ringing out lustily that the spring is here, the sun is shining, for the sun always seems to shine on the daffodils, they reflect his glory under all clouds, and depression flies before their sturdy assumption of "All\'s well with the world."

[Pg 72]

And so I felt very hopeful as I saw my circles, my clusters, my rows of daffodils, one by one, flashing up from the delicious blue-green blades. They none of them failed me, none, bless them! So plant daffodils, O friend Ignoramus! the single, the double, and any other of that dear family, the narcissus.

The birds were singing, and oh, so busy making late love, building and even nesting! The trees were bursting, the lilacs had a shimmer of green. The larches had colour almost too dim to be called green, they streaked the woods that still looked brown without looking bare; little catkins hung and danced, the blackthorn looked like forgotten snow, the grass was greener, and here and there a sweet primrose bud peeped up, whispering, "We are coming."

Down under the row of limes bordering the sloping field I found many pretty crumpled primrose leaves, and they gave me the idea to plant more and more, and to have my wild garden here, with snowdrops and cowslips, unseen things in our woods and fields. Ferns, too, of the common kind must be collected, and foxgloves, the seeds of which[Pg 73] must be bought and sown. For the present there were the little wild things that grow on their own account, and are so sparklingly green and spring-like that one hardly likes to rebuke them with the name of weed.

Hope was in the air. Everything is young again once a year.
I

I felt obliged to begin the second division of my year in a hopeful voice, so I opened with my daffodils; but if March be taken as the first month of spring, then indeed I should not have written of that chime of golden bells. March holds February very tightly by the hand, and cannot make up her mind to hurry on with her work of opening the buds and encouraging the flowers. She blows cold winds in their faces, nips them with frosty nights, occasionally wraps them up in snow, then suddenly, repenting her of the evil, she opens up a blue sky and pours a hot sun down on them. A most untrustworthy month.

[Pg 74]

There is plenty of work to do, particularly if February has not been an open month, and for gardening purposes I really think it ought never to be so considered, and still more particularly if much has been neglected in the foregoing November. If you are an Ignoramus, and have a Griggs as gardener, the chances are much will have been neglected.

My attention was called to the subject of roses by the arrival of a rose-grower\'s catalogue.

Roses! I could only touch the very outer fringe of this magnificent garment, but I felt I must, positively must, have one or two of the cheaper sort of these dazzling beauties; and though they are better moved in the autumn, in early spring it is not impossible. A crimson rambler, the modest price one shilling and sixpence, tempted me to indulge in three. The deep yellow William Allen Richardson, delightful for buttonholes, which Jim assured me no garden should be without; the thought of a red Gloire de Dijon or Reine Marie Hortense was also quite overcoming. Our old yellow Gloire de Dijon was the only rose in my neglected garden that did herself proud,[Pg 75] and she flourished up the front of the house and festooned one of the Others\' windows, from which Griggs and his shears had been summarily banished. "Cut where you like, but never dare to come here," had been uttered in a voice that made even Griggs "heed." If her red sister only equalled this "glory" that half-crown would be well expended. Then two standards needed replacing, for one could not have dead sticks down so conspicuous a row; though standards were not my idea of roses, still there they were and I must make the best of them. So off went my modest order. I had indicated the whereabouts of each rose to Griggs, but was unfortunately not present on their arrival. I think even an Ignoramus might have helped Griggs on that occasion—but more of that anon.

The Others could see but little improvement in the garden, this they let me know; they were full of ideas, and I found them as trying as some Greek heroine must have found an unsympathetic chorus. "The verandah was so bare! Was it really any use putting in that silly little twig? Would it ever come to anything?"[Pg 76] This of my new and very bare-looking crimson rambler. And then, "Why had we no violets? Surely violets were not an impossibility? They grew of themselves. Just look at the baskets full in the London streets. Such a bunch for a penny! But it would be nice not to have to go to London for one\'s bunch of violets!"

I took up the cudgels. They should see how that crimson rambler ramped, yes, I prophesied, positively ramped up the archway. They should be buried in a fragrant bower of ruby-coloured clusters, and they might cut and come again. As to violets, I was giving them my best consideration; the bed down the garden produced but a few—certainly not a pennyworth—of inferior quality, because neither violets nor anything else, save weeds, grew and flourished by the light of Nature alone. The violet roots were choked with weeds, and I must have new suckers and begin all over again; and that was not possible until the violet season was over; then I intended to beg, borrow or steal some good suckers, and buy others if I had any money.

[Pg 77]

"Mary, you speak like a book with pictures; but I hope there will be some result, and that the violets will be ready before they are needed for our funeral wreaths."

I entreated them to find the patience I had thoroughly lost, and hurried out to rage over the thickly weed-wedged violet plants, with here and there a feeble bloom, and to imagine myself in years to come bending over this same bed, picking one long strong stalk after another, and scarcely lessening the store by the big bunch I should carry away. Oh! a lifetime was not enough for all I should or could do in a garden.
T

There is a row of standard roses skirting the lawn on one side, and also a round bed of rose bushes. I had not much idea if they were any good, for roses had been to a great extent spoilt the last two years by very wet weather, still I had noticed the shoots they were sending forth with great[Pg 78] pleasure. Anyhow they were growing right enough. One day, the middle of March, I found Griggs busy down the row with a large knife. What was he doing? Horror! All the long shoots were being ruthlessly sacrificed.

"Griggs, what are you doing?" I gasped, and afterwards I felt very glad I said nothing stronger.

Griggs paid no attention to my tone; he took the words as showing a desire for enlightenment.

"You \'as to cut \'em a bit in spring-time, you know; or p\'haps you don\'t know, missy."

This mode of address was one of Griggs\'s most unpardonable sins, but I never had the strength of character to tell him not to do it.

"But do you cut off all the new growth?" I said, with an inner conviction that if Griggs were doing it it needs must be wrong.

"Well, you trims \'em round a bit, starts \'em growin\' more ways than one, d\'ye see."

"But those aren\'t suckers?" I said, still feebly fighting with my ignorance and incredulity.

[Pg 79]

Then Griggs laughed. He did not like me, and I suppose I ought not to wonder, but he enjoyed laughing at me when he got the chance.

"No-a, they ain\'t suckers; suckers come from the root, leastways, they start down there, and, bless yer! they be the ol\' stock trying to have a look in as you may say. I cuts them off soon as I sees \'em, as they wastes the tree; but you can see suckers as \'as got the upper \'and. That rose front of the \'ouse is all sucker now. \'Twas a beautiful pink rose I mind in old Rector Wood\'s time."

"That is very instructive," I remarked, feeling no gratitude to Griggs for his information, as he felt no shame for the metamorphosis of the once beautiful pink rose, which was now a wild one. We had wondered how it came to be growing up with the clematis.

"And can\'t one cut back the suckers and let the pink rose grow again?" I added.

"\'Tain\'t likely," was all I could get out of Griggs.

I bicycled over that very day to the Master\'s garden, a hot and tiring way of getting information,[Pg 80] but a sure one, I knew, and one to which I often had recourse in desperate moments. The Master was out, but his garden was there, and all his rose trees were clipped. So I breathed again.

I had a little good luck with violets a few weeks later.

A friend who had heard of my gardening efforts sent me several dozen runners of the "Czar," and the Master spared me some others from his frame. I was full of joy, and choosing a shady spot, saw it dug, raked, helped out with a mixture of manure and leaf-mould, planted the violets at six inches apart and liberally watered them. Shade, of course, for the modest violet, I thought, carefully selecting for their home the shelter of an overhanging chestnut. Well, well! one lives to learn, or for some such purpose, I suppose.

The thick branches of that shadowing tree kept out sun as well as rain; and, doubt it not, brother Ignoramus, violets, be they ever so modest, like the sunshine and will only pine without it. So in the autumn another move took place, and again I waited, whilst the Others[Pg 81] bought penny bunches and talked of funeral wreaths in the far future.
T

The long herbaceous border grew more and more interesting. A broad-leafed plant had been sending up tall stems, now it opened out and a big daisy-like blossom of yellow shone in the sun. "Leopard\'s bane," said old Griggs with decision, and "doronicum," said the Master, both being right, but I know not why it was considered a bane or healing, for the banes among the flowers are surely blessings. But there it was, and very grateful and comforting at this early time of year. As though conscious that a friendly eye had begun to watch over them, the scattered old plants of polyanthus, wallflower, a group or so of tulips and some clumps of London pride brushed up this spring and cheered the eye.

I was studying the shooting green clumps, lilies here and there, golden rod, autumn daisy,[Pg 82] maybe a stray phlox, many, very much too many, evening primroses, seedlings of self-sown foxgloves, and wondering how to rearrange them and make room for the better company I intended introducing, when his Reverence\'s Young Man came down the path laden with a big brown hamper. He looked quite excited.

"Oh, Mistress Mary, do come and examine the contents. I hope you may find welcome strangers here. I told my mother you needed anything and everything except geraniums. Was that right? So she has sent this hamper with instructions to get them in at once."

The Young Man was cutting away at string and fastenings, and rapidly strewing the path with big clumps of roots in which a careful hand had stuck a label.

I was divided between joy and reproof.

"How kind of her! But you should not have bothered her. How nice to have such big, ready-grown plants! But why did you do it?"

"Mayn\'t I help the garden to grow? My mother promises more in the autumn; it appears flowers like to move just before winter."

[Pg 83]

"It is kind of you. This border is such a weight on my mind. It needs so much, I think. And what a lot the hamper holds!"

"Let me do the dirty work," cried the Young Man, as I hauled out a big root. "You shall tell me where to plant them."

"The earth isn\'t dirty, it is beautifully, healthily clean; and don\'t you love its \'most excellent cordial smell\'? Shall I get Griggs and a spade?"

"Oh, why bother Griggs? Won\'t I do as well? I know nearly as much and am twice as willing."

"Yes, but think of—"

"Don\'t say parish. There is only old Mrs Gunnet and she will keep. These plants demand immediate attention. My mother was most emphatic about that."

It is very difficult to have a conscience as well as a garden and to keep both in good working order. I could not think Mrs Gunnet and her rheumatism as important as my garden; moreover, I felt I was carrying out the teaching of Tolstoy in bringing man and his Mother Earth into direct contact.

[Pg 84]

"Griggs could not come anyhow, he is digging a grave," I said conclusively. "Let us do it."

So the Young Man fetched a selection of gardening implements and we both set to work, he to dig and I to instruct.

"This is delphinium," I cried joyfully, handing him a big clump, "dark blue, I want it badly." And in answer to an inquiring look, for the Young Man knew less, much less, than I did, "That is larkspur and it is a perennial, and this jolly big root means plenty of spikes."

"Spikes!" he echoed, patting the roots vigorously.

"Those tall spikes of flowers, you know, very blue. One looks so lonely all by itself."

"Ah! that is a way we all have, we poor solitary ones."

"These are penstemons. They are, well, I forget, but I know I want them. Suppose we put them further forward; they don\'t look like growing so tall. Gaillardias, ah! I know, they are brilliant and effective. I bought some seeds to suit the others. These[Pg 85] will save time. Now, a big hole; this is Tritoma. What on earth is that? I have heard. Grandis means big but Tritoma?"

We both studied the label.

"Must it have another name? Is that the rule? I told my mother the gardener was an Ignoramus. She might have written in the vulgar tongue."

"Did you mean me or Griggs?"

"Griggs, of course."

"Then you were wrong. But I remember now, I was studying its picture this morning in the catalogue. Tritoma stands for red-hot poker. It will look fine at the back."

"Well, you are getting on," said the Young Man, in tones of admiration. "But why won\'t they say \'poker\' and have done with it?"

"I wish they would. It is very trying of them. See what a lot you are learning. This is much more improving for a son of Adam than visiting old women and babies."

"Much! And I like it much better, which shows it is good for me."

"Ah, I don\'t know about that. Still, it[Pg 86] does strike me as absurd to send a young man fresh from college to visit old women and babies. I can\'t think what you say to them."

"I say \'Did ums was ums\' to the babies. But I am not quite fresh from college, you know. I talk some kind of sense to the mothers; at least, I hope so."

He was making a big hole and I was holding out a big root to fill it.

"This is galega. It is rather tall and so must go at the back. I don\'t mean you never talk sense, though I consider it insulting to address a baby like that. They look so preternaturally grave that Greek would suit them better. But I mean it isn\'t a man\'s work, it is a woman\'s."

"Galega! that means pok—no, larkspur! You see I am getting quite learned. There, it fits in beautifully."

"Press the roots firmly or they don\'t take hold," I observed.

"So. I always find your conversation very improving. My mother says the same things to me, I mean about old women."

[Pg 87]

I had walked down the path for another root. He went on when I came back,

"But you know the old women, and young ones too, like a visit from their clergy. The clergyman and doctor are great boons in their lives."

"Poor souls, I know they are very hard up. Even I am considered a boon, especially when I go round with puddings and things."

"Or without!" and he looked up quickly, "I should think so if—but"—and his voice changed—"I do understand what you mean. This is Adam\'s work, eh? Only the other is the vineyard too, and we, I—I mean, need the experience it gives me. They live at the root of things, touch life so nearly. It is something like coming in touch, actual touch, with the brown earth. Do you see what I am trying to say?"

I looked up at him from my plants, at this tall young man in a bicycling suit of semi-clerical cut, with his keen face and earnest eyes, whom we had fallen into the way of treating in almost brotherly fashion since his Reverence had adopted him as his[Pg 88] Young Man as well as curate. He had broken down in some Midland town from overwork and come to Fairleigh to recruit and study and fill in a convalescent time. As a rule we did not like the curates.

"I think you are right," I said, "but somehow I feel I am right too in a way. One can\'t be saving souls all the time—one\'s own or other people\'s—and here, as you say, is Adam\'s work, the brown earth."

He laughed. "And here is Eve naming the flowers! I am sure Eve kept Adam to the digging while she picked the fruit."

"How men do love that old allegory! Personally I don\'t think they come out of it so well that they need quote it so often. However, as it gives them all the backbone, I feel quite absolved when I ask them to use it!"

The Young Man rose up. "Ah! if Eve had had the spirit of her daughters!"

"Here is a very large phlox, please dig that hole bigger," I interrupted, and as we carefully placed it in position, down the path came his Reverence and the Master.

[Pg 89]

"Oh!" I shouted, "come and see all my new arrivals; I am going to cut you out!"

The Master examined our work over his spectacles, and looked up and down the border critically, ending his survey with an unpromising "Humph."

Something was very wrong, evidently. My hopeful spirits sank.

"Have we been doing anything very ignorant? Don\'t you put plants straight into the earth? Will they all die?"

The Master laughed.

"Let us hope things are not as desperate as all that. I was looking at your border. Oh, what pauper fare! and what a lot of rubbish in it. Licence has reigned here for many a long year."

"For over twenty," I exclaimed savagely. "Griggs has been here quite that time."

"It used to look very well in Mr Wood\'s time, but that is many years ago, and he devoted himself chiefly to his roses. It is a pity you did not do it in the autumn."

"Oh, don\'t, Master!" I cried dolefully.[Pg 90] "Nothing is more trying to my temper than to be told of all the things that ought to have been done months and years ago. I can\'t go back and do them!"

"No more you can. There is a great deal of sound sense in that remark, only—"

"And don\'t tell me to wait until the autumn again. I can\'t always be waiting for the other end of the year to do the things I want done now."

"Oh! then let us go forward at once," said the Master.

"What shall I do?" asked the Young Man, with as much energy as though the afternoon were just beginning. "Shall I take out the roots we have put in to begin with?"

The Master again looked up and down, and I could see he was again regretting the autumn.

"If you won\'t wait it must be done," he said at last. "Have this border thoroughly well turned over, two feet deep at the least, and work in some of that savoury heap I saw in your little yard. You will[Pg 91] find a good deal of root to cut away from those trees; they take the food from this border, but that can\'t be helped now. Then clear out the weeds and those terrible marigolds I see springing up everywhere, and those poppy seedlings. I think your new friends will have a better chance when that is done."

"And the plants that are to stay, may they be touched?"

"You must touch them, but do a piece at a time, and lift them in and out with a good ball of earth round the roots so as to disturb them as little as possible. Press them well in afterwards and water."

"Should Griggs put some of the savoury heap just round their roots?"

"No, no, let the whole border have a dressing. Later on any special plant may be mulched if it is needed."

"Mulched!" said the Young Man, turning to me. "Do you know what that is?"

I shook an ignorant head.

"Something to do with manure, I believe, but I don\'t know what."

[Pg 92]

"Griggs will show you," laughed the Master.

"No, he has his own vocabulary. I try the garden book words on him occasionally and he looks quite blank."

"It is giving the plants a little extra food from the surface. So it sinks gradually in or the rain carries it down with it. A gentle process and the roots are not disturbed. The other process may produce indigestion, you see."

Adam and Eve carefully replaced the unplanted roots in the hamper and gave a sigh.

"Oh, dear! All our work. You might as well have gone to see Mrs Gunnet."

"Oh, no," said Adam, "because I have learnt a great deal and can help you another time."

It was a good thing for me and the border that the Master had looked so grave over it, for his Reverence was duly impressed with the necessity of the case, and Griggs and a helpful stranger were hard at work next day and the next, and by the end of that week the border lay smooth and brown and[Pg 93] neat with hopeful green patches at intervals. Jim and I and the Young Man had been very busy arranging those patches, and I hoped the front plants would not grow taller than the back, but a good deal had been left to luck. The evening primroses and marigolds and weeds had disappeared, I hoped for good. Time proved that this was too hopeful a view to take of weeds.

And I will never forget the Master\'s parting injunction.

"Mind," with raised finger, "you ought never to take a spade near your herbaceous border, only turn it over with a little fork, for the well-established roots should not be disturbed. And good soil and sufficient water ought to be enough as a rule. To-day we have been dealing with an exceptional case, remember that!"

Oh! Master, yes. Mine is an exceptional case; but I guess there are many would-be gardeners as ignorant, and, maybe, many gardens as exceptional.

[Pg 94]
B

But to return to my hopefully-growing seeds. I fear they were being left anyway rather longer than was judicious, for one day about the beginning of April it struck me my wooden boxes were very full and the plantlets growing very leggy.

"Why is that?" I asked Griggs. I hated asking Griggs, but there was no one else to ask. After all it seemed impossible but that Griggs, during the forty odd years he had pretended to be a gardener, should not have gathered together some scraps of information concerning plants and their ways.

"They wants pricking out, that\'s why they\'re so spindle-shankey. \'Tain\'t no good asking me for more boxes, I ain\'t got no more; and you can\'t put \'em out in the open neither—leastways, they\'ll die if you do."

"Of course not," I said with all the knowledge I possessed in my tone. "But we must have boxes. They can be knocked up, can\'t they?"

"Not without wood, they can\'t. And just[Pg 95] look at all them seeds wot you\'ve sowed. Why, they wants a sight o\' boxes now."

It was a dilemma, but Jim revived my faint spirits.

There were boxes—old winecases—in the cellar, he said. Jim knew every nook and cranny of the house; he would just ferret them out; no one would miss them. Jim never asked leave, for experience had taught him that a demand occasions a curious rise in the value of an article absolutely unknown to the possessor before it was required by someone else. And Griggs knocked them together, for Jim explained we had to let the fellow try his hand occasionally.

We filled the new boxes with a little heavier diet than the baby seeds had enjoyed, good mould from under some shrubbery, and then carefully separated each stem; and carrying out Nature\'s law of the survival of the fittest, I placed the most promising in the new environment.

I had done one whole box, it looked so neat, the little upright shoots all about[Pg 96] three inches apart, when Jim and the Young Man came round.

He had been away for a few days and was quite anxious to know how my garden grew.

He had altered the old rhyme with which, of course, his Reverence and the Others were always pestering me; but I don\'t think his version was very original either—

"How does the garden so contrairy
Get on with its new Mistress Mary?"

I was seated on the corner of the one frame and the boxes were precariously placed on the edge.

The Young Man\'s face beamed. "I have been learning to prick out; now, let me see."

And to my horror he began to pull up my neat little plants.

"There, that............