14 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



glare, and the cold world trembled in his cruel hug 

 and grip, — I went to Nottingham. Again, as the 

 hail beat upon the window of the rail conveyance, 

 and I sat dithering in the eastern wind, which whistled 

 its contempt of my rug and foot-warmer, a horrible 

 dread of imposition vexed my unquiet soul. Nor 

 were my silly suspicions expelled until my hansom 

 from the station stopped before the General Cathcart 

 Inn, and the landlord met me, with a smile on his 

 face and with a Senateur Vaisse in his coat, which 

 glowed amid the gloom like the red light' on a 

 midnight train, and (in my eyes, at any rate) made 

 summer of that dark, ungenial day. Within his 

 portals I found a crowd of other exhibitors, some 

 with Roses in their coats like himself, and some 

 without, for the valid reason that they were there in 

 their shirt-sleeves, with no coats at all, just as you 

 would see them at their daily work, and some of 

 them only spared from it to cut and stage their 

 flowers. These welcomed me with outstretched hands, 

 and seemed amused when, on their apologising for 

 their soiled appearance, I assured them of my vivid 

 affection for all kinds of floricultural dirt, and that 

 I counted no man worthy of the name of gardener 

 whose skin was always white and clean. No : a rich, 

 glowing, gipsy brown is that one touch from Nature's 

 paint-brush which makes the whole world of florists 



