"Never mind what the old ones look like. It's the new I'm telling you of. Don't you understand that everyone who comes down, from Kew even, says, 'That's a nice healthy little lot of Berberis Knightii as you've got a hold of.' 'Ha,' says the Rector. 'I thought as you'd go for to say that. But it ain't Knightii,' he chuckles, 'and what's more it ain't got a name yet, only a number, being a new importation from China,' he says. You go and call out what I told you, and he'll be so pleased, why, I wouldn't say he won't shovel half of the garden into your hands straight off."
"Do the young ladies take an interest in flowers?" Guy asked.
"Of course they try," said Birdwood condescendingly. "But neither them nor their mother don't seem to learn nothing. They think more of a good clump of dellyphiniums than half-a-dozen meconopises as someone's gone mad to discover, with a lot of murderous Lammers from Tibbet ready to knife him the moment his back's turned."
"Really?"
"Oh, I was like that myself once. I can remember the time when I was as fond of a good dahlia as anything. Now I goes sniffing the ground to see if there's any Mentha Requieni left over from the frost."
"Sniffing the ground?"
"That's right. It's so small that if it wasn't for the smell anyone wouldn't see it. That's worth growing that is. Only, if you'll understand me, it takes anyone who's used to looking at peonies and suchlike a few years to find out the object of a plant that isn't any bigger than a pimple on an elephant."
Guy was reluctant to let Birdwood go without bringing him to talk more directly of the family and less of the flowers. At the same time he felt it would be wiser not to rouse in the gardener any suspicion of how much he was interested in the Rectory: he was inclined to think he might resent it, and he wanted him as a friend.
"Who is working in your garden?" asked Birdwood, as he turned to go.
"Well, nobody just at present," said Guy apologetically.