210 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



bring yourself to pouring it down the pantry sink, 

 refilled the vases, and that was all!" 



In spite of a certain sense of annoyance that I felt 

 at the way in which Maria was giving me a lecture, and 

 somehow when a person has taught for ten years she 

 (particularly she) inevitably acquires a rather unpleas- 

 ant way of imparting the truth that makes one wish to 

 deny it, I stood convicted in my own eyes as well as in 

 Maria's. It had so often happened that when either 

 Barney had brought in the sweet peas and left them on 

 the porch table, or Bart had gathered a particularly 

 beautiful wild bouquet in one of his tramps, I had lin- 

 gered over a book or some bit of work upstairs until 

 almost the time for the next meal, and then, seeing the 

 half-withered look of reproach that flowers wear when 

 they have been long out of water, I have jammed them 

 helter-skelter into the first receptacle at hand. 



Sometimes a little rough verbal handling stirs up the 

 blood under a too-complacent cuticle. Maria's preach- 

 ment did me good, the more probably because the time 

 was ripe for it, and therefore the past two weeks have 

 been filled with new pleasures, for another thing that 

 the month spent in the open has shown me is the wonder- 

 ful setting the natural environment and foliage gives 

 to a flower. At first the completeness appeals insensibly, 



