straight walk that, beginning at the porch, went through an arched grape
arbour, divided the vegetable garden, and finally ended under a tree in
the orchard at the barrier made by a high-backed green wooden seat, that
looked as if it might have been a pew taken from some primitive church
on its rebuilding.

There were, at intervals, along this walk, some bushes of lilacs,
bridal-wreath spirea, flowering almond, snowball, syringa, and scarlet
flowering quince; for roses, Mme. Plantier, the half double Boursault,
and some great clumps of the little cinnamon rose and Harrison's yellow
brier, whose flat opening flowers are things of a day, these two
varieties having the habit of travelling all over a garden by means of
their root suckers. Here and there were groups of tiger and lemon
lilies growing out of the ragged turf, bunches of scarlet bee balm, or
Oswego tea, as it is locally called, while plantain lilies, with deeply
ribbed heart-shaped leaves, catnip, southernwood, and mats of grass
pinks. Single hollyhocks of a few colours followed the fence line; tall
phlox of two colours, white and a dreary dull purple, rambled into the
grass and was scattered through the orchard, in company with New England
asters and various golden rods that had crept up from the waste
pasture-land below; and a straggling line of button chrysanthemums,
yellow, white, maroon, and a sort of medicinal rhubarb-pink, had backed
up against the woodhouse as if seeking shelter. Lilies-of-the-valley
planted in the shade and consequently anæmic and scant of bells, blended
with the blue periwinkle until their mingled foliage made a great shield
of deep, cool green that glistened against its setting of faded,
untrimmed grass.

This garden, such as it was, could be truly called hardy, insomuch as
all the care it had received for several years was an annual cutting of