Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
on our knees to admire the beautiful oval blooms, one or 
two of which are over-blown and look like golden stars. 
Mrs. Moss smiles, and gives the Latin name, Sylvestris, 
with delicate careful pronunciation, adding : “I am glad 
you like my Goosebills ; I got them first from an old woman 
in the village, but I believe they are really the only wild 
Tulips of England. She told me her mother called them 
Goosebills, because in their arching stems they resembled the 
geese curving their necks on the village-green. Now they 
grow like weeds, and I can scarcely keep them down at all. 
I cannot give them all the garden.” She looks round as 
she speaks ; all the garden is comprised in these few beds, a 
small green lawn where, beneath the Beech-tree in Summer, 
she asks her friends to partake of Strawberries and Devon- 
shire cream, and a tiny walled garden where grow espaliered 
fruit-trees and vegetables intermingled in old-fashioned 
friendliness with budding Lilies of the Valley, Forget-me- 
not, Auriculas, Bearsfoot, as Mrs. Moss calls it, and pink- 
purple Primroses. Later on here will be wealth of old- 
time Roses, Cabbage and Moss, and Golden Iris, and blue- 
purple Iris, Pinks and Carnations ; but in the meantime it 
is Spring, and the fruit-trees are only showing leaves and 
a few stray early bunches of flower. Under the trees on the 
lawn there is a perfect carpet of wild Celandines — Swallows- 
wort somebody delightfully calls it — and somewhat apart, 
under a Pine-tree, a colony of wild Cyclamen have spread 
themselves, much to Mrs. Moss’ delight. She knows every 
inch of ground in her domain and rejoices in it as a mother 
in her child. Who has not some friend or friends like dear 
old Mrs. Moss ? Thank God, there are many such still left in 
this nineteenth-century utilitarian age who still make Pot- 
pourri to fill old China bowls and ungrudgingly fill your 
hands with their choicest flowers, as we reluctantly take 
leave and go forth from that calm oasis out into the world’s 
bustle again. But, reader, if you will come with me, there 
are pleasant gardens in other walks of life which we may 
visit together, and, as some old writer hath it, “ perchance 
to the refreshing of our soules.” 
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