232 ANCIENT SUSSEX GAME OF STOOLBALL 



old pots and pans, chipped bricks and broken 

 drain-pipes, all the accumulations that somehow 

 find their way into gardens, heaped upon the top 

 of it. Then, when it began to settle, and rain and 

 weather even more than human hands shaped 

 it into a miniature mountain, broken glass and 

 crockery, treasured remains of visits to foreign 

 countries that a youthful member of my kitchen 

 often gave a death-blow to, were added to the 

 funeral pile. Buried beneath chalk they lie, help- 

 ing to make a home for rosemary and pink Bour- 

 bon roses, which, together with the dark green of 

 Irish yews, have converted this raised ground 

 into an ornamental mound garden. As, in single 

 file, looking like some band of pilgrims or blue- 

 robed saints of Fra Angelico, they continue their 

 walk, I hear their leader draw attention to a 

 deeply excavated, sunk garden which " Paradiso " 

 looks down upon, and which, for the sake of 

 comparison, we have named " Inferno." At pre- 

 sent, with a carpet of forget-me-not and irises, it 

 resembles a sea of blue, but sometimes we have 

 contemplated turning it into a scarlet garden and 

 having a mass of red-hot poker plants, or some 

 flower name like it, that would be more in keeping 

 as a stronghold to which enemies could be banished. 

 I should explain that when my gardeners play 

 stoolball they wear a different uniform from the 

 one in which they carry on their garden work. In 

 order to distinguish them from their opponents 

 they have skirts of Irish poplin, and the colour 

 selected is that of the order of St. Patrick. Con- 

 sequently, dressed in this most beautiful of all 



