88 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



and which sat apart in a corner by themselves, 

 the old front yards were rich in tulips, which 

 were planted in double rows against bunches 

 of white columbines. People either love tulips 

 passionately or they do not care for them at 

 all. They are not flowers to be half-hearted 

 about, any more than they are flowers to plant 

 by the dozen. Dozens of hyacinths, if you like 

 their heavy odour and their stiff, haughty stems, 

 but hundreds of tulips, red 



" Like a thin clear bubble of blood," 



pink, white, yellow, orange, brown, with such 

 tones and semitones of colour that, borrow- 

 ing the words from music, one can almost hear 

 their loud triumphant paean of victory over 

 Winter. 



There was always room near the tulips for 

 plenty of little dull-pink polyanthus, with their 

 cheerful April faces, and there was always 

 a corner for the wild flowers brought home 

 from woodland rambles hepaticas, blood- 

 roots, dicantras, trilliums, windflowers, sweet 

 williams, larkspurs, with perhaps some cypre- 

 pediums, the "moccasin flower" of the early 

 Protestants, the " lady slipper " of the Catholic 



