“Oh! we know,” eagerly cried the lady in charge, “we know he does! He should have had it this morning, only we were travelling.”
We were pleased with the anecdote when Loki’s Grandfather told us. No introductions, no explanations needed: even our own special doggy dialect instantly apprehended! One touch of Peky makes the whole world kin.
A divine discontent seems an unavoidable accompaniment of garden ambition. The Lady of Villino Loki is always furiously disappointed every time she returns home—except in the Spring. She had, this time, wonderful visions of her Madonna Lilies, proudly straight against the upper terrace wall; of her Blue Border foaming blue; of her new turf settling down into greenness. And, behold, the Lilies have got the lily disease, drat them! the Blue Border never will be blue, whatever she does; the Anchusas have gone back to the wild; and not one drop of water has the infant turf received through three weeks of drought since her departure—with the results that can be imagined!
Not one of our precious packets of seed have come up! We once knew a pretty American whose daughter married a rather impoverished young Englishman of very good connexions. He was, however, scarcely important enough himself to attract much attention: and the day before the wedding he was nonplussed by his future mother-in-law, hitherto the most silky and smiling of beings, taking him by the arm and marching him round the displayed wedding presents, pausing at every step to remark: “I do not see the present of your uncle, Lord A.! I do not see the present of your cousin, Lady B.! I do not see the present of your great aunt, the Duchess of C.!”...
We want to take the seedsman in similar fashion round the greenhouse shelves:
“Where are the pots of Mignonette?” we will say. “Where the serried ranks of Scarlet Verbena? Where are the potted Nicotianas?”...