THE CHARM OF GARDENS 



of old security and calm, and have an air of wise old 

 age. 



Up and down the five white steps from the garden 

 path to the house more than five generations have 

 passed, men in wide-skirted coats and full wigs hanging 

 about their ears in great corkscrew curls, men in pow- 

 dered wigs, rolled stockings, square buckled shoes, 

 men in stocks and immense collars, and big frills to 

 their shirts making them look like gentlemanly fish, 

 down to the man who comes out to day who looks a 

 little old-fashioned, and is square-built like the house, 

 and who parts his hair like the men in Leech's pictures, 

 and who wears a rim of whisker round his face. And 

 troops of ladies have passed out by that door into the 

 garden in hoops, and sacques, and towers of hair, and 

 crinolines. But no lady comes out now to cut the 

 Lavender hedge, or snip at the Roses. The man is 

 alone. But when he sits alone under the tree, with a 

 spud by his side ready to uproot Plantains from his 

 lawn, he can see troops of the garden ghosts sitting 

 round him under the Acacia tree. 



Sometimes there seems to be a sound of the ghostly 

 click of bowls on the lawn, for it is a bowling-green 

 banked up on three sides (the fourth bank has been done 

 away with long ago), and there is a company of gentle- 

 men in their wide shirt sleeves playing bowls. Above 

 them, on the raised terrace next to the house where 

 there is a broad path, a group of old people sit by little 

 tables and drink wine, and smoke, and gossip. And 

 behind them are tall Hollyhocks, and Roses and a 

 tangle of old-fashioned flowers such as Periwinkles 

 and Sweet Williams, and Pinks. The Acacia tree, 

 which grows on the lawn beyond the bowling green, is 

 quite small. 



The old man who dreams of these ghosts in his garden 



170 



