162 THE NEW COTTAGE 



by the Dream Duchess who, we hope, still comes 

 this way. 



But it is modern, present-day gardening and 

 what pertains to it that we should be considering, 

 not the faint perfume of faded pot-pourri that the 

 Weavers' windows and old Richard, the sexton, 

 led us to think of, because it is wafted by the 

 wind across the Weald near his old farm. 



After the oak dresser and its pewter plates, the 

 grandfather clock and all the tables and chairs 

 had been moved to the new home, only a brief 

 twenty-four hours elapsed before the front garden 

 was taken in hand. I was asked to walk over one 

 morning and watch all that took place, so accord- 

 ingly, upon one of those early spring days when 

 all the world is suddenly filled with music and the 

 song of the thrush is drowned by many sky- 

 soaring larks and even their music dwindles 

 into insignificance near the sheepfolds where lambs 

 call loudly to their mothers, I set out for the little 

 hamlet on the outskirts of which is the cottage 

 which we still call " The house with no name." 



The first familiar object that I saw, standing 

 outside the garden wall, was our hand-barrow, 

 laden with tools which were to be used in making 

 beautiful this poor neglected strip of ground. On 

 it was a large sack full of rich soil with which the 

 best plants were to be top-dressed, as well as a 

 bundle of tall wooden posts to form supports for 

 climbing roses. Several boxes of Madonna lily 

 crowns had also been brought and were to make a 

 white line upon either side of the red brick path 

 that leads from the road to the door of the cottage. 



