Mistress Mary's Garden did grow remarkably well, and it was
wonderfully attractive considering the fact that few persons besides
herself saw anything but weeds in it.

She did not look in the least a 'contrary' Miss Mary, as she stood on
a certain flight of broad wooden steps on a sunshiny morning; yet she
was undoubtedly having her own way and living her own life in spite
of remonstrances from bevies of friends, who saw no shadow of reason
or common-sense in her sort of gardening. It would have been foolish
enough for a young woman with a small living income to cultivate
roses or violets or lavender, but this would at least have been
poetic, while the arduous tilling of a soil where the only plants
were little people 'all in a row' was something beyond credence.

The truth about Mistress Mary lay somewhere in the via media between
the criticisms of her sceptical friends and the encomiums of her
enthusiastic admirers. In forsaking society temporarily she had no
rooted determination to forsake it eternally, and if the incense of
love which her neophytes for ever burned at her shrine savoured
somewhat of adoration, she disarmed jealousy by frankly avowing her
unworthiness and lack of desire to wear the martyr's crown. Her
happiness in her chosen vocation made it impossible, she argued, to
regard her as a person worthy of canonisation; though the neophytes
were always sighing to


'have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale gold.'