"If you'll climb 'pon the hedge yonder—that's my boundary—you'll see a little strip of a field, not fifty yards wide, runnin' down this side of the plantation. It widens a bit, higher up the hill, but 'tis scarcely more than a couple acres, even so. Barton's Orchard, they call it."
"But what about it?" asked Cai, craning his neck over to examine the plot.
"Why, to be sure I want to take it in for my roses. It lies rather too near the trees, to be sure; but one could trench along the far side and fill the trench with concrete, to check their roots from spreadin' this way; and all the soil is good along this side of the valley."
"Then why not buy it, ma'am, since 'tis for sale? Though for my part," added Cai, looking round upon the beds which, just now, were unsightly enough, with stiff leafless shoots protruding above their winter mulch, "I can't think what you want with more roses than you have already."
"One can never have too many roses," declared Mrs Bosenna. "Let be that there's new ones comin' out every year, faster than you can keep count with them. Folks'll never persuade me that the old H.P.'s don't do best for Cornwall; but when you go in for exhibition there's the judges and their fads to be considered, and the rage nowadays is all for Teas and high centres. . . . When first I heard as that parcel of ground was likely to come in the market, I sat down and planned how I'd lay it out with three long beds for the very best Teas, and fence off the top with a rose hedge—Wichurianas or Penzance sweet briars—and call it my Jubilee Garden; next year bein' the Diamond Jubilee, you know. All the plants could be in before the end of February, and I'll promise myself that by June, when the Queen's day came round, there shouldn't be a loyaller-bloomin' garden in the land."
"Well," allowed Cai, "that's sensibler anyway than puttin' up arches and mottoes. But what's to prevent ye?"
"'Tis that nasty disagreeable Mr Middlecoat," answered Mrs Bosenna pettishly. "He comes and tells me now as that strip has always been the apple of his eye. . . . It's my belief he wants to grow roses against me; and what's more, it's my belief he'd swallow up all Rilla if he could; which is better land than his own, acre for acre. It angers him to live alongside a woman and be beaten by her at every point o' farmin'."
"But you've the longer purse, ma'am, as I understand," suggested 'Bias. "Talkin' o' which—" He fumbled in his breast-pocket and produced an envelope.
"My rent, ma'am."
"Ay, to be sure: and mine, ma'am," Cai likewise produced his rent.