80 ESCAPED FROM GARDENS 



tened in the sun with the quality of worked metal. 

 Nell stopped short on the next flat when we ex- 

 claimed in wonder; for after years of experience she 

 has learned to interpret Oh's and Ah's as an 

 equivalent for Whoa! 



Elecampane is often a disheveled sort of weed, 

 a plant of waste places; but this bunch was fully 

 six feet tall, and seemed like a traveller from a land 

 of quicker growths than ours, that, losing its way, 

 paused to rest in the rail -fenced corner. 



Outside the boundary of Lonetown, the houses 

 have been oftentimes replaced by new buildings ad- 

 joining thrifty acres. Then the old garden and 

 the new are blended, and the escaping flowers of 

 each set out in company, or else overtake one 

 another on the road. We passed by such a farm 

 almost as soon as we gained the hilltop. Of the 

 old escapes, the dainty, trailing Coronilla, of Eng- 

 lish birth, had claimed twenty feet of roadside for 

 its vetch -like vines and rosy flower -clusters resem- 

 bling clover -heads, the florets set crown wise, thus 

 giving the plant its name. Then, a rod or two 

 below, edging a tilled field, was a crowd of single 

 Hollyhocks, pink, yellow, and red, the very same 

 as hob-nobbed with Dahlias beside the path inside 

 the garden; and a half mile up the road a Chinese 



