More Chatter 
a little boy. A long-forgotten fragrance seemed 
to cling to them—a lost quiet. 
But this fragrance, this quiet, proceeded 
probably from the old man’s quiet mind whatever 
he spoke of, and made it singularly pleasant to 
be with him—to stroll with him hobbling up and 
down the garden behind his cottage, or into the 
little wood of birches at the side. At the far 
end of the garden he had a fowl-run, and near it 
a shed where he stabled the pony for his milk- 
round. And in the garden, along with potatoes 
and cabbages for his own use (but he had a few 
roses and pansies too), to say nothing of the 
rhubarb which he showed me how to grow 
(“Take it up and leave it kickin’ about all the 
winter,’ he laughed, as if the manure from the 
pony’s stable had nothing to do with it)—in the 
garden he used to grow mangold for the pony— 
to grow and harvest the crop in the same manner 
as he would have done a larger crop on his farm. 
Separated from the garden by a ditch and a 
low bank was the little wood of birch trees 
already mentioned, tangled with thickets of 
brambles and a few scrubby oaks. Through 
this maze my uncle once led me to a disused gravel- 
pit half full of water, as was only to be expected 
in that waterlogged soil. The place was pretty 
enough, with its banks, fern-edged, overhanging 
the water, dark amongst the trees; but what Mr. 
Smith especially wished me to see was a brood of 
fe) 
