SUMMER’S LEASE 
67 
masses, too, that bring to mind fair tropic shells or 
the Star Magnolia in the heyday of its prime—but 
even that in all its glory was not arrayed like one 
of these. True it is that they are somewhat apt to 
use the royal privilege of caprice—I, at least, have 
so found it—but a good year like this makes full 
amends. Still, for all these imperial divinities, I have 
not utterly discarded my older friend, the buxom, 
blowsy crimson pasony; “ like some poor, nigh-related 
guest, who may not rudely be dismissed,” it spreads its 
ample charms abroad in many a corner of the copse 
and the wild garden; for thus placed, the reproach of 
rank odour and coarse mien falls from it and it is justi¬ 
fied of its existence. 
Down in the orchard garden, despite the large and 
liberal promises of peach and plum tree, apricot and 
pear, there is a gentle sense of gloom, emanating, it 
would seem, from the power that fain would be, of 
respectful disapproval, as it were, and, had I the 
conscience of an earwig, I should feel myself overcome 
with guilt. “ J'accuse” says his every glance, and cc I 
foretold it ” lurks unspoken beneath each murmured 
pessimism that he utters. And the worst of it is that 
he was right and I wrong, and the pigeons have eaten 
the sweet-peas—my milk-white pigeons, with the 
roseate feet, of whom I could believe no evil, whose 
saintly presence seemed to brood as a beatitude above 
the lawns, about the trees. Or, watching them with 
eyes half-closed in the warm sunlight, tripping daintily 
to and fro with measured paces and trains uplifted, they 
have seemed to me for all the world like the delicate 
