My Friends in their Gardens 
a teakettle, as our modern progress has been irreverently 
described, and sundry inlaid caskets, and notably a round 
table cunningly formed of a multitude of coloured marble bits, 
bore witness to his appreciative taste. But he had refrained 
from putting unclad nymphs among his garden glades, and 
the old garden looked as it might have done when his 
ancestor entertained Mary Queen of Scots. It is evident 
that charming queen must have spent all her time travelling, 
since nearly every Scottish gentleman’s house seems to have 
seen her, as guest or prisoner ! I do not know whether the 
old Bowling-green — lovely green velvet lawn that it was ! — 
had been actually pressed by the fairy foot of the ill-fated 
beauty, but since the old place had belonged to a faithful 
adherent of hers, and she is said to have visited it in her 
earlier and happier days, she and her Maries may have 
played hide-and-seek in and out among the devious Holly- 
hedges of which but a few now remain in the pleasaunce so 
ancient, bird-haunted and well kept. Certain it is, a bed of 
Angelica is said to have been planted by Mary, who is like- 
wise credited with having introduced several other herbs 
into Scotland. In those days Angelica stalks were eaten 
as we now eat Rhubarb, or blanched and eaten like Celery. 
In Lapland they are still appreciated in this fashion, and 
in Longfellow’s saga of King Olaf, the king brings his bride 
Angelica stalks. 
There was a Nut- tree-alley, too, of Spanish filberts, 
planted, so the legend ran, by the Spanish bride of some 
Laird long since dead, who had faded away beneath the 
colder sun of the northern clime, but who had left her 
name to the Lady’s-walk and a silver reliquary to the 
curio-table in the Green Drawing-room. The number of 
lovers that walk had seen ! It was the most sheltered walk 
in the garden, and just sufficiently apart from the Bowling- 
green to render it certain some of the players would be for 
ever straying away. When I knew the old house, Darby 
and Joan (to speak more respectfully, the Laird and his 
Lady) often walked there, though the strength of his youth 
had left the Laird’s arm, and the man who had led forlorn 
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