The girl continued her confidences: “When I lay awake at nights with insomnia, I used to shut my eyes and think out the garden I wanted to find. It wasn’t a grand garden, or a gorgeous one that I used to plan—carpet bedding and terraces with beds of geraniums and peacocks would have tired me to arrange in proper style just then. The garden I wanted was the sort of happy place where flowers seem to grow of their own accord with no one to worry them about tidy habits!
“And then, it was quite remarkable, the day after I arrived here, I chanced upon the lane leading to your cottage, and there I saw the very garden I had been so longing for, and the masses of flowers and colour I had been quite hungry to see. I could hardly tear myself away from the little gate. Of course, the florists wouldn’t think much of me for saying it, but although I admire with real wonder the magnificent blooms they exhibit at shows, I would rather have that piece of rocky wall, with its wallflowers on the top, than the most expensive orchids they could show me. But perhaps all this seems rather childish to you?”
Yet it didn’t! I knew exactly what she meant; and every flower-lover will understand it too. There are times when I go a good deal farther than the V.A.D., and actually object to some of the improvements on Nature horticulturists think they can make. What is gained by trying to produce rhododendrons looking like gypsophila, while at the same time they are trying to get gypsophila looking like pæonies? What purpose is served in the modern craze for getting every flower to look like any other flower excepting itself? While I don’t mean to imply that I am so narrow as to object to attempts at horticultural development, there certainly are limits to desirable expansion—as Shakespeare very well knew.
But I had no time to say more, for as she was speaking I caught sight in the distance of a stalwart, aggressive-looking female, with an armful of MSS. and walking-stick clasped to her waistbelt, and clad in a long, loose, tussore silk coat (we were all wearing them short at the moment) that she clutched to her chest with her other hand, as it had lost its fastenings, and was threatening to blow away. Her hat was of the fluffy “girlie” description, somewhat bizarre in shape, which looked preposterous above the lady’s mature locks, more especially as she had put it on hind part front, not even bothering herself to ascertain its compass points.