CHAPTER II 



THE EARLY WINDOW-BOX 



'* Yet sun and wind, what can ye do 

 But make the leaves more brightly show ? '' 



Since Londoners have learned that life without scent 

 and colour is not worth living, England's capital has 

 become a City of Flowers. It is not only Covent 

 Garden and the great floral shops of the West End that 

 blaze with blossoms ; the same idea has spread into 

 every little outlying suburb, wherein no self-respecting 

 greengrocer, however small his frontage, would fail to fill 

 a shelf or two with fresh-cut flowers several times a week. 

 Here every careful housewife holds her Saturday market- 

 ing incomplete till she has bought the bunch of sweetness 

 that is destined to adorn the Sunday sitting-room or 

 grace the midday meal. Cold winds of wintry spring 

 may blow, but, wrapped in folds of pale green tissue 

 (w^hich sets them off amazingly), bright yellow Daffodils, 

 purple Violets, white Narcissus, or branches of the 

 almond-sweet Mimosa, are carried through the streets 

 by thousands. 



All this is delightful ; but cut flowers, lovely and 

 decorative as they are, can never satisfy the deeper 

 necessities of the soul. We admire them, we enjoy 

 them, but it can hardly be said we love them ; they are 

 too strange to us, like new friends that we have not had 



time to cultivate, but must let go ere we know them. 

 8 



