HONEYSUCKLE AND BITTER APPLE
Last night Loki’s Grandmother began to plan a new garden extravagance. She finds it very soothing when sleep abandons her pillow. We have not half enough Honeysuckle—that’s a fact. She thinks she will order a dozen pots. She has also a desire to get a dozen Clematis, chiefly Jackmanni, in the mauve and purple sorts, and plant them in their pots—the only way, she believes, in which even the commonest sorts will grow in this ungrateful soil. Honeysuckle, we know, thrives here. One summer we took a house on a hill near this, a little house buried in a wood, and the whole place was exquisite with the scent of Honeysuckle. It was grown all about the house, and over archways in the garden. Horrid archways made of wire they were: but it didn’t matter, the Honeysuckle was the thing. We wanted all we could get of it, for there were other odours, not at all so nice, that lurked about. The owner of the house, thrifty soul ‹at least we suppose it goes with a thrifty soul›, waged war against moths with naphthalene and Bitter Apple, which are anathema maranatha to us. We have had our nights poisoned in a house in Scotland with the reek of Bitter Apple in the blankets. We don’t know what people’s noses are made of that they can voluntarily surround themselves with such a pestilential atmosphere. The owner of the awful blankets also keeps her furs with the same evil-smelling precaution; and we can trace her entrance into the most crowded winter tea-party in London if she has as much as passed up the stairs.
Besides Bitter Apple inside the honeysuckle-covered house, there was a pig outside—not on the premises hired by us, but in the adjoining place, where there was a school for little boys. When the wind blew from the direction of that school, the garden was odious, Honeysuckle and all. The first day we hoped it might be accidental. Then Saturday came, and we suppose the odd man did a turn at the sty, for there was peace till the next Tuesday, when the wind blew from the south again. Then Loki’s Grandmother marched into the room of Loki’s Grandfather ‹there was no Loki then, so he wasn’t a grandfather, but that is immaterial› and dictated a letter to the schoolmaster. Loki’s Future Grandfather protested. It is the kind of thing he hates doing. She drove him into the garden to smell. He tried to say he couldn’t smell it. Then she changed her tactics and hinted at insalubrity—a case of diphtheria in the village, and the danger to Loki’s Future Mother. That had him. He went in and sat down like a lamb. She dictated, as has been said. If anyone wants to know the kind of letter in which to remonstrate upon a neighbouring schoolmaster’s pigsty, he cannot do better than copy this model:
“Dear Sir,—I must apologize for troubling you but I feel sure that you are unaware of the offensive condition of the pigsty which adjoins our garden—”
“Offensive?” said Loki’s Grandpa doubtfully.
“Offensive,” said she firmly. “Offensive, you can’t put anything milder. It’s disgusting, pestilential, a public nuisance.” “There is so much sickness in the district—” she dictated on.
“Oh, I don’t think I need put that.” Loki’s Grandfather was getting bored.
“You must,” said she; “that will fetch him more than anything. Isn’t he a schoolmaster? If it gets about that he’s got an insanitary pig—”