I'll show them to you.'

Hubert would have preferred to walk with her through these ornamental
swards; and he liked the espalier apple-trees with which the garden was
divided better than the glare and heat of the greenhouses into which she
took him.

'Do you care for flowers?'

'Not very much.'

'These are all my flowers,' she said, pointing to many rows of flower-pots.
'Those are Julia's. You see I run a line of thread around mine, so that
there shall be no mistake. She is not nearly so careful as I am, and it
isn't nice to find that the plants you have been tending for weeks have
been spoilt by over-watering. I don't say she doesn't love them, but she
forgets them.... Just look at those; they are devoured by insects. They
want to be taken out and given a thorough cleansing. Even then I doubt if
they would come out right,--a plant never forgives you; it is just like a
human being.'

'And doesn't a human being ever forgive?'

'Oh, I didn't mean that!' she said, blushing; 'but sometimes I could cry
over the poor plants which she neglects. I daresay you will think me very
ridiculous, but I do cry sometimes, and sometimes I cannot resist taking
them out on the sly, and giving them a thoroughly good syringing,--only you
must not tell her; we have agreed not to touch each other's flowers. But I
cannot bear to see the poor things dying. How do we know that they do not
suffer?'