SUMMER’S LEASE 
65 
call the poor man’s chrysanthemum, to which an over- 
zealous sense of discipline had dealt out strict fetters of 
confining bast, constraining their pretty elegance to the 
stiffness of a Georgian grenadier. I do not like my 
flowers with too many gyves upon their wrists, and it 
seems to me for the moment as though a judicious use 
of the scissors were worth hours of honest toil and 
leagues of bast. 
The flower-garden is almost at its gayest moment; 
the perfumed, fringed white pinks, with their elaborate 
lacings of wine-colour or faint green, the not less 
fragrant rose pinks; fluttering menies of viola and 
pansy; fantastic companies of antirrhinum, powdered 
with divers dyes, for all the world like ancient chintzes ; 
scented stocks, nasturtiums that flare to flame-colour or 
fade to amethyst—-there are too many to be named or 
numbered. 
But the sovereign lady of all herbaceous things is 
surely the pasony, and it has pleased Son Altesse to be 
especially gracious this year, so that lawn and border¬ 
land, drive and wilderness shine in unwonted pomp, 
while the Oak Parlour blossoms like the rose, and smells 
almost as sweetly, with the gathered blooms. The 
portly blue and white Delft jars, the dragon bowls, the 
Ionic urns of pale pewter and glowing copper, are filled 
with these giant roses that reign in equal loveliness 
within doors or without. Double, semi-single, single, 
anemone-flowered, these are but the rough suggestions 
of their forms; as for their colours and the whole 
refulgent beauty of them, I resign from telling of it. My 
words that would praise them are impotent things 
F 
