occupants of the place were big enough to be transplanted, Mrs. Cosmos
and family pushed their heads against the sash and insisted upon seeing
the world. Once in the garden, they throve mightily, and early in July,
at a time when I had more flowers than I needed, the entire row
threatened to bloom. After two weeks of coquettish showing of colour
here and there, up and down the line, they concluded that midsummer sun
did not agree with any of the shades of pink, carmine, or crimson of
which their clothes were fashioned, and as for white, the memory of
recent acres of field daisies made it too common, so they changed their
minds and proceeded to grow steadily for two months. When they were
pinched in on top, they simply expanded sidewise; ordinary and
inconspicuous staking failed to restrain them, and they even pulled away
at different angles from poles of silver birch with stout rope between,
like a festive company of bacchantes eluding the embraces of the police.
A heavy wind storm in late September snapped and twisted their hollow
trunks and branches. Were they discouraged? Not a particle; they simply
rested comfortably upon whatever they had chanced to fall and grew again
from this new basis. Meanwhile the plants in front of them and on the
opposite side of the way began to feel discouraged, and a fine lot of
asters, now within the shadow, were attacked by facial paralysis and
developed their blossoms only on one side.

The middle of October, the week before the coming of Black Frost, the
garden executioner, the cosmos, now heavy with buds, settled down to
bloom. Two large jars were filled with them, after much difficulty in
the gathering, and then the axe fell. Sometimes, of course, they behave
quite differently, and those who can spare ground for a great hedge
backed by wall or fence and supported in front by pea brush deftly
insinuated betwixt and between ground and plants, so that it restrains,
but is at the same time invisible, may feast their eyes upon a spectacle