street of sepulchers in greenery and bloom, and grass to encroach
on the flower plots.

A half century ago there were no rotary lawnmowers to cut off
clover heads; and, if there had been, one could not have been
used on these dropping terraces, so populous with slabs and so
closely set with turfed mounds and oblongs of early flowering
annuals and bedding plants. Mr. Brown had to get down on his
hands and knees, with gardener's shears, to clip the turfed
borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks. Thus he
could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in
his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies,
whether to spare them, give a country violet its blossoming time,
and leave a screening burdock undisturbed until fledglings were
out of their nests in the shrubbery.

Mistress Jeanie often brought out a little old milking stool on
balmy mornings, and sat with knitting or mending in one of the
narrow aisles, to advise her gude-mon in small matters. Bobby
trotted quietly about, sniffing at everything with the liveliest
interest, head on this side or that, alertly. His business,
learned in his first summer in Greyfriars, was to guard the nests
of foolish skylarks, song-thrushes, redbreasts and wrens, that
built low in lilac, laburnum, and flowering currant bushes, in
crannies of wall and vault, and on the ground. It cannot but be a
pleasant thing to be a wee young dog, full of life and good
intentions, and to play one's dramatic part in making an old
garden of souls tuneful with bird song. A cry of alarm from
parent or nestling was answered instantly by the tiny, tousled
policeman, and there was a prowler the less, or a skulking cat