However, he did not give up. He brought to his wooing the same
determination which had made him second gardener at the Hall at
twenty-five. He was a novice at the game, but instinct told him that a
good line of action was to shower gifts. He did so. All he had to shower
was vegetables, and he showered them in a way that would have caused the
goddess Ceres to be talked about. His garden became a perfect crater,
erupting vegetables. Why vegetables? I think I hear some heckler cry.
Why not flowers--fresh, fair, fragrant flowers? You can do a lot with
flowers. Girls love them. There is poetry in them. And, what is more,
there is a recognized language of flowers. Shoot in a rose, or a
calceolaria, or an herbaceous border, or something, I gather, and you
have made a formal proposal of marriage without any of the trouble of
rehearsing a long speech and practising appropriate gestures in front
of your bedroom looking-glass. Why, then, did not Thomas Kitchener give
Sally Preston flowers? Well, you see, unfortunately, it was now late
autumn, and there were no flowers. Nature had temporarily exhausted her
floral blessings, and was jogging along with potatoes and artichokes
and things. Love is like that. It invariably comes just at the wrong
time. A few months before there had been enough roses in Tom
Kitchener's garden to win the hearts of a dozen girls. Now there were
only vegetables, 'Twas ever thus.

It was not to be expected that a devotion so practically displayed
should escape comment. This was supplied by that shrewd observer, old
Mr Williams. He spoke seriously to Tom across the fence on the subject
of his passion.

'Young Tom,' he said, 'drop it.'