ii4 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 



less than one day's work of a skinner ! 

 The musk rose that we planted last year is 

 flowering freely ; small flowers with a small 

 delicious scent. I wonder if the delicate pink 

 of its petals is the * musk-colour ' of some 

 old writers ! Does not Shakespeare write 

 somewhere of a ' musk-coloured coat? ' 



The white noisettes climbing all over 

 our old Stone Pine droop down to 

 the very grass in trails and wreaths 

 covered thick with bunches of little 

 white roses in lavish beauty. The curi- 

 ous strong fragrance fills all that end of 

 the garden. A child, a little elf of blue 

 eyes and pink cheeks running here and 

 there through and through the rose -falls, 

 was one day, like a vision from fairyland ! 

 Rosa microphylla has grown herself into a 

 great green bush in the Fantaisie. But as 

 to flowering, she seems to think little of 

 that : two or three red flowers only, of no 

 account. The darlings of the year are the 

 great broad-flowered York and Lancasters. 

 I count them over morning after morning 

 as a miser counts his gold. It is worth a 

 visit just after sun-rise to see and smell 



