XIX
The Blue Border.
The warm weather has come with a burst in this last week of April. We have torn ourselves away from Villino Loki to London pavements. The Floribunda trees are covered with red buds. We expect a glory when we return. Loki’s Great Aunt has presented his family with twenty-five shillings worth of purple Aubretia, with which ‹much to Adam’s annoyance› we have decided to carpet the blue border. The Blue Border, we think, is under some evil bewitchment. Our late gardener assured us that no “human gardener” could find room for another plant. Yet it was the only border in the garden that “came up bald,” if one can use such an expression. Perhaps we had too much initiative and he too little; a combination bound to result in failure sometimes, if it is accompanied on one side by plunging ignorance, and on the other by “slowness of intellect, Birdie, my dear.”
To come back to one’s garden in April after ten days of strenuous London is a wonderful little experience for people who care for the pure joys of the young green and the spring flowers.—There is an indescribable panorama of woodland beauty on the hills opposite Villino Loki. A great marching regiment of pines, straggling upwards, emphasize the tints of birch and larch—tints which no pen, hardly any brush, could portray. The very sunlight seems caught and sent forth again from the pale yet vivid sheen. The White Broom is pearled with bud; in a few days it will burst into bloom and toss plumes as of some fantastic, fairy knighthood above the yew hedges that enclose the Dutch Garden.
The dogs’ welcome to their lost masters and to Loki ‹who, of course, always accompanies his family wherever it goes› is very genuine, and rather obstreperous. Bettine runs in and out of the room, up and down the furniture, as if in joyful pursuit of imaginary rats. Arabella, fond and foolish as ever, tries to crawl into everybody’s lap. Being about the size of a young calf, these blandishments are not encouraged. Loki, little Fur-man, as we call him, has a different way of expressing his feelings. True, he runs about and yelps rapture to the other dogs; but he sobs and cries like a child on reunion with any of his own, and half swoons with rapture in our arms. Sometimes it seems as if the love in his heart were too big for his little flame-coloured body, and must burst it in the endeavour to express his joy!
MISUNDERSTOOD CANDOUR
Loki is always very bumptious and pleased with himself in London—being Only-dog there—but he cannot bear visitors beyond a certain limit. Friends who come to tea are very much touched and charmed at the sight of the “dear little dog” going from one to the other, sitting up and waving his paws with frantically imploring gesture.