“Something like what?” said I.
“A double row of these,” he said, “with here and there one of a different colour would never be equalled.”
I agreed with him sarcastically. “Never,” said I, “would they be equalled for utter hideousness. Far be it from me,” I said, “to fill the hearts of my neighbours with envy of this border.”
“You don’t care for them?”
“Chuck it at him,” said the robin.
“I wouldn’t be seen dead in a path bordered with flints,” I said.
More in sorrow than in anger he removed the offending flint, and we resumed work. The last time we had used bricks for an edging they had all cracked with the frost, so that idea was left alone. Not, of course, that all bricks crack, but the bricks about here seem to be very soft.
I asked if we had any tiles.
He knew of some tiles, a lot of them, nearly buried in the earth and covered with Moss. They were an old line running by the path inside the wall by the paddock; the path by the rubbish heap.
“But,” he said, having the rout of the flints in his mind, “it would take a man all day to dig them up, and scrape them and wash them, and then he couldn’t say they would be any use when it was done. And in a garden where an extra man——”