XVIII 



THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 



(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose) 



Oaklands, September 29. Michaelmas. The birthdays 

 of our commuters are not far apart. This being Evan's 

 festival, we have eaten the annual goose in his honour, 

 together with several highly indigestible old- country 

 dishes of Martha Corkle's construction, for she comes 

 down from the cottage to preside over this annual 

 feast. Now the boys have challenged Evan to a "golf 

 walk" over the Bluffs and back again, the rough-and- 

 ready course extending that distance, and I, being 

 "o'er weel dined," have curled up in the garden-over- 

 look window of my room to write to you. 



It has been a good gardener's year, and I am sorry 

 that the fall anemones and the blooming of the 

 earliest chrysanthemums insist upon telling me that 

 it is nearly over, that is, as far as the reign of com- 

 plete garden colour is concerned. And amid our 

 vagrant summer wanderings among gardens of high 

 or low degree, no one point has been so recurrent or 

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