284 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



a solemn league and covenant, and to inquire 

 after the welfare of these offshoots of one's 

 own fuchsias is as much a part of good manners 

 as to ask after Aunt Anne. There is, more- 

 over, no better way to court a disfavour which 

 may amount to social ostracism, than to neglect 

 the cuttings once they have been accepted. 

 Candid persons may declare their utter in- 

 ability to make anything grow, and so escape 

 with pitying incomprehension, but to take 

 upon oneself the obligation a slip imposes, 

 and then to fail ! 



I am sorry that I said I did not like red 

 geraniums when I think how cheerfuHy they 

 have smiled at me across the snow from many 

 a cottage window ! I wish I had left unwritten 

 those ungracious lines about the coleus, when 

 I remember into how many starved lives they 

 bring the colour of the stained glass of old 

 cathedrals as they spread their branches across 

 the pane. The little crab-cactus that seemed 

 such a bore what gay little lamps he has 

 lighted now ; and as for the cyclamen (" with 

 their mitrelike flowers they resemble an oecu- 

 menical council of fairy bishops," said Dean 

 Hole), how could anyone begrudge the three 



