44 
THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
Then you have rich cups that glow with the colours 
and the faint bloom of plum and grape, of apricot and 
peach, together with dim, fawn-flushed lilacs and oranges 
vermilion-stained. One of the loveliest and the best 
among the Cottage tulips is the Picotee, carved out of 
primrose-tinted ivory, and every slenderly curved petal 
pencilled at the rim in purest carmine by some elfin 
artificer. The Sultan is, most appositely, almost black, 
but comely in the extreme in his ebon bravery shot 
through and through with dark amaranthine gleams; 
while close beside him stands, like some fair Circassian 
of the Seraglio, the Fairy Queen, who, one would think, 
must surely have arisen out of the mists of some magic 
cauldron, wherein the enchanter had commingled pearls 
and opals, amethysts and violets, rather than from the 
common sources of being. 
Each group that marks a further stage on Spring’s 
highway one leaves reluctantly; it is ave atque vale yet 
again for another whole year long, and you would be 
hard put to it to say which you regret the most. 
Sometimes I have thought it to be the lilac ; but just 
for the moment I am almost convinced that it is the 
earlier tulips—not, let me say at once, the very early 
Due van Thols, whose hard gem-like flames leave me 
cold—but that taller, many-coloured multitude whose 
goblets open wide to exhale their fragrance of wild 
honey before they break and fall. And most markedly 
perfumed of all these is Mon Tresor, a veritable pomme 
d'ambre with the scent of a tea-rose. Yet, for all its 
intrinsic worth and loveliness, even this fair company 
will show to mean advantage under the tyranny of 
