ii8 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 



or honey-scented Alyssum; while about 

 the iron gates in the old brick walls 

 flexuosa honeysuckle flings perfume far 

 and near. The sweet pea hedge round 

 half the tennis-lawn is full of lovely 

 caprices of colour. One set of white 

 blossoms is tinged with pale bluish. That 

 quaint, patchy, grayish and white kind, 

 which by some absurd association of ideas, 

 reminds me always of the old sign of 

 the ' Bald-faced Stag ' on Putney Heath, is 

 frequent, and so is the old fashionedst of all 

 the pretty pink and white. We have 

 not yet the new pink sweet pea, the 

 colour of a moss rose or of raspberry 

 cream. Plain white is, after all, the best 

 perhaps. Nature never planned a lovelier 

 flower of such airy lightness. It might 

 shake its butterfly wings and fly, it is so 

 lightly poised upon the slender stalk ! 

 Perhaps to the name * sweet pea,' and to 

 the sweet freshness of the flower, memories 

 of childhood cling more closely than to any 

 other garden name. 



Sweet peas and mignonette should 

 always grow together. Even the down- 



