daffadowndillies being _modern_, and indignation at hearing exactly the
same adjective applied to them that the woman who sells me my hats
bestows on the most appalling examples of her stock.

"They are to be in troops on the grass," I said; whereupon his face grew
doubtful. "That is indeed _sehr modern_," I shouted. But he had grown
suddenly deafer--a phenomenon I have observed to occur every time my
orders are such as he has never been given before. After a time he will,
I think, become imbued with my unorthodoxy in these matters; and
meanwhile he has the true gardening spirit and loves his work, and love,
after all, is the chief thing. I know of no compost so good. In the
poorest soil, love alone, by itself, will work wonders.

Down the garden path, past the copse of lilacs with their swelling dark
buds, and the great three-cornered bed of tea roses and pansies in front
of it, between the rows of china roses and past the lily and foxglove
groups, we came last night to the spring garden in the open glade round
the old oak; and there, the first to flower of the flowering trees, and
standing out like a lovely white naked thing against the dusk of the
evening, was a double cherry in full bloom, while close beside it, but
not so visible so late, with all their graceful growth outlined by rosy
buds, were two Japanese crab apples. The grass just there is filled with
narcissus, and at the foot of the oak a colony of tulips consoles me for
the loss of the purple crocus patches, so lovely a little while since.

"I must be by myself for once a whole summer through," I repeated,
looking round at these things with a feeling of hardly being able to
bear their beauty, and the beauty of the starry sky, and the beauty of
the silence and the scent--"I must be alone, so that I shall not miss
one of these wonders, and have leisure really to _live_."