306 THE GARDEN OF A 



"Now you must really tell me what you are 

 thinking about. What are you planning ? You are 

 staring downhill there as if you had not heard a 

 word that I said. Ah, I know, you are thinking to 

 make that slope into a lawn, and a nice one it will 

 be if you can get the grass to take. We've had 

 horrid luck and are all ploughed up on three sides 

 again for the fourth time." 



" A lawn ? Why, it is a lawn now ! " I exclaimed 

 indignantly, " a lovely, wild lawn." 



" A wild lawn ? How odd ! just fancy ! Why, it 

 is full of everything but grass. Somehow, I thought 

 a lawn was all grass, you know." This with a criti- 

 cal squint that she always gives when she thinks she 

 has made a point. 



" I believe, now you mention it, that lawns are 

 usually made of plain ordinary grass all one even 

 colour, shaven, shorn, and oh, so monotonously 

 green ; an unnatural sort of thing, in short, just like 

 the foliage beds people freckle these lawns with. 



" Now our lawn that you see down there is decid- 

 edly unusual, I will grant, but it's perfectly natural and 

 not at all monotonous, for it's never the same colour 

 for two successive months. Nature, when undis- 

 turbed, is never monotonous, you know. Even when 

 using green, the most frequent colour on her palette, 



