An Indian branches with a shimmer of gold and green. Do you remember ? 

 Garden And then in June, when you picked me a blue convolvulus- 

 shaped flower ; what is it called ? They hardly last an hour. 

 Yesterday I sat facing a wall covered with them. It was in 

 the garden at Jeypur ; built and planted for the mother of one 

 of the Maharajahs. In front of me was a broad terrace ending 

 in a marble balustrade covered with a creeper with delicate pink 

 flowers like small flutes, from the Philippine Islands. Beyond, 

 a long vista of tropical foliage with here and there a fine tree 

 like an English Elm, and covered thickly with a kind of 

 Stephanotis flower. In the far distance a triple archway 

 entrance of purest white, built in the exquisite Mahomedan 

 shape of a hundred years ago. The foreground is all 

 Bougainville a and Hybiscus illuminated by the late afternoon 

 sun. On the left stood a white marble fountain with graceful 

 little wild doves and pigeons drinking, and close by a feathery 

 Palm reaching right away into the air, making a resting-place 

 for dozens of chattering, brilliant green parrots flying round it 

 like emeralds. Just in front was the fernery made of matting, 

 as all ferneries are here, and above on the wall, your blue 

 Convolvulus. Never have I seen such a contrast to your 

 own garden ! . . . ." 



What fascination there is in blue ! I do not say in blue 

 paint* The various blues of flowers are countless. Yet every 

 one in turn is loveliest. In some strange way, legion though 

 they be, a blue flower is always more or less a surprise. The 

 most sumptuous rain-bow border of a palace garden never 

 could compare with the selvedge of a common field road I saw. 

 The road was rimmed on either side, with a crowd of blue 

 moons of Chicory (or Devil's bit scabious). Colour so cold, 



68 



