Robin Hood's Barn 



into one head. Why don't I pull it out? I pro- 

 test with little hope of understanding that I 

 never lift a plant in flower. I dare not teU the 

 truth that I have taken an odd liking to this 

 mixed bouquet. 



Perhaps instead, a Uttle later in the season, she 

 confronts the larkspur which I have grown so 

 patiently from seed. There is, so far as I can 

 see, no lack of beauty to its blueness that ranges 

 from the azure of a noonday sky to the didl pur- 

 ple of shadows falling somberly at dusk. Her 

 one comment, however, is to ask me, if I have 

 ever thought of sending over to Lemoine. She 

 has found his French seed so satisfactory in pro- 

 ducing new varieties and, just for a start, she 

 may be able to spare me a few plants. Inevitably, 

 she is a person with a preference for double flow- 

 ers. She would muflie up my canterbury-beUs 

 in whose great dusky cups the pollened clappers 

 lie so lightly. The rosettes of hollyhocks, re- 

 flexed in such flne curves, so delicately fluted, she 

 would have resemble the artificial pompons of a 

 Pierrot. Even the petticoats of single poppies 

 are too frank in their allure. She would turn a 

 [202] 



