Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
hopes and storming parties had now not even strength to 
throw the jack. But still they frequented the Nut-alley and 
crept arm-in-arm along in the sun, Joan with her silvery 
hair and ivory complexion, and Darby erect and tall, like a 
withered oak of the mountain-side, with the piercing blue 
eyes, that had cowed the mutinous sepoy, dwelling fondly on 
his beloved. One hears a great deal about the loves of 
youth, but I think there is great beauty in the faithful affec- 
tion of years, when a pair of lovers are spared to grow old 
together in the nest of their young love. There was the 
Myrtle, sprung from a sprig of her bridal bouquet she had 
planted, now grown a tree against the Greenhouse-wall, and 
the Lavender-hedge the children remembered as long as 
they could remember anything, and the bed of White Lilies 
they had called Mother’s Lilies all their young lives, and 
now the grandchildren pervade the old garden, and learn 
the names of the different corners and speculate in the 
Pugs’ Cemetery, a secluded glade where numberless pugs 
and terriers have their little lives commemorated by moss- 
grown stones with Chloe, Tom, or Sambo cut upon them. 
Farther away was the lawn where in past days triumphs of 
archery had been won ; Grandmama’s old bow still hung in 
the hall. Now the scattered Snowdrops were no longer dis- 
turbed by the falling arrows, and croquet was the pastime 
of the hour. How beautiful the Laburnums were along 
the avenue beneath the dark Scotch firs and spreading 
beeches ! — “ Golden-rain ” seemed such a good name for 
them, even when the drenching Scotch rain sent their 
shining petals drifting in all directions. I had always 
thought the Laburnum only fit for a villa-garden, but 
after seeing Corbie Hall with Laburnums in the strips of 
plantation which bordered so many of its fields or “ parks,” 
as the Scotch call them, I began to admire them and think 
they were distinct adjuncts to the stately Firs and graceful 
Larches. The Broom, too, were so beautiful on the 
outskirts of the plantation, and the Sweetbriar in the lane 
that led to the Knight’s Croft, which in the Spring was just 
one mass of white Bird Cherry, and even after my old 
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