32 A BOOK ABOUT THE GABDEtf. 



cosy chamber, I can tell you, or what would happen 

 to those seed-bags hanging around, or to those roots 

 and tubers piled, dry and dormant, in the back- 

 ground ? The adjuncts of the apartment might not, 

 perhaps, impress any but a floral mind with an idea 

 of beauty. There is a potting-bench beneath the 

 closely-shuttered window, with a trowel protruding 

 from such well-matured and mellow soil, that I have 

 heard my gardener declare it to be " as rich as a 

 plum-pudding." Hard by, two bulky bags of sand 

 from Reigate lean lazily against each other, like two 

 aldermen of extra corpulence going home after a 

 Lord Mayor's feast. Beyond is a pyramid of boxes, 

 with many a railway label on their green exteriors, to 

 tell of the anxious miles they have travelled with 

 auriculas, pansies, carnations, verbenas, roses, holly- 

 hocks, and dahlias, in the sunny days that are past. 

 Then comes a solid quadrupedal desk, full of cata- 

 logues and secretaries' letters, schedules, and floral 

 publications, good store. Next to it the painter's 

 studio a table with pots of green and white paint, 

 and neat "tallies," and slim training-sticks, and 

 circular wirework, balloons, and baskets of a dozen 

 fanciful designs. Upon the whitewashed walls a pair 

 of bellows appears to be discoursing with a " Brown's 

 fumigator " on the best method of getting rid of 

 aphides. A wrathful canary, roused from its slumbers, 

 twitters expostulations from its cage, and wishes 

 " The Six of Spades " at Jericho. Above the fire- 

 place is a piece of broken looking-glass, before which 

 I once saw an under-gardener attempting to shave 

 himself with a new budding-knife, and making such 



