"I had always thought," said the old lady to Derry, when he presented Jean, "that a vegetable garden was uninteresting. But it is a little world--with class distinctions of its own, if you please. All the really useful vegetables we call common; it is the ones we can do without which are the aristocrats. The potatoes and cabbages and onions are really important, but I am proudest of my young peas and my peppers and cucumbers and tomatoes, and that's the way of the world, isn't it? If there was only an aristocracy things would stop, but the common folk could go on alone until the end of time."
She gave Jean a blue bowl to pick strawberries in; and Derry dug asparagus--the creamy shoots were tipped with pale purple and pink, deepening into green where they had stood too long in the sun.
"Aren't there any flowers?" Jean was anxious.
"Come and see." The old woman went ahead of them, her cane tap-tapping on the stone flags.
She opened a gate which was flanked by brick walls. "These," she said, whimsically, "are my jewels."
All the sweetness which had once spread over her domain was concentrated here, fragrance and flame--roses, iris, peonies--honeysuckle--ruby and emerald, amethyst and gold; a Cupid riding a swan, with water pouring from his quiver into a shallow marble basin.
"I should not have dared keep this, if it had not been for the other--" the old woman told them. "I am very sure that in these days God walks in vegetable gardens--"
For breakfast they had strawberries and radishes, thin little corn cakes--and two fresh eggs from the chickens which most triumphantly occupied the conservatory.
"This is the only way I can do my bit," the old lady explained, "by helping with the world's food supply. My eyes are bad and I cannot sew, my fingers are twisted and I cannot knit, and Dennis is old--but we plan the garden and plant--"
And that night Jean said to Derry, "I am glad there were flowers to make it lovesome--and I am glad there were vegetables to make it right."
So he drew a waving field of corn back of the dream cottage, and tomatoes and peas to the right and left--with onions in a stiff row along the border, and potatoes storming the hillside. But the gate which led to the Lovesome Garden was open wide, so that one might see the Cupid as he rode his swan.