BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 23 



exchanged many little visits, for our husbands agree, and 

 now that she has time she is becoming an enthusiastic 

 gardener, after my own heart, having last season become 

 convinced of the ugliness of cannas and coleus beds about 

 a restored colonial farmhouse. Why might they not join 

 us on our driving trips, by way of their vacation ? 



Immediately I started to telephone the invitation, 

 and then paused. I will write instead. Mary Penrose 

 is on the long-distance line, toll thirty cents in the 

 daytime! In spring I am very stingy; thirty cents 

 means six papers of flower seeds, or three heliotropes. 

 Whereas in winter it is simply thirty cents, and it must be 

 a very vapid conversation indeed that is not worth so 

 much on a dark winter day of the quality when neither 

 driving nor walking is pleasant, and if you get sufficiently 

 close to the window to see to read, you develop a stiff 

 neck. Also, the difficulty is that thirty cents is only the 

 beginning of a conversation betwixt Mary Penrose and 

 myself, for whoever begins it usually has to pay for 

 overtime, which provokes quarterly discussion. Is it 

 not strange that very generous men often have such 

 serious objections to the long-distance tails to their 

 telephone bills, and insist upon investigating them with 

 vigour, when they pay a speculator an extra dollar for a 

 theatre ticket without a murmur? They must remem- 



