"Well, it didn't agree with the wife," he admitted. "She felt lonely down there with me up here all day long. Besides, she has a taste for the theatres and seein' the shops, so we moved up to Fulham. It's much handier, but, of course, I haven't got a garden, not to speak of, now."
"How much?"
"About the size of this small hall, sir. But roses won't grow there. I've tried, giving 'em all the manure I could get; but they don't take to Fulham. It's easy enough to get manure in London, sir; there's plenty of that in the streets. It's the soil that's wanting."
"That's the truest description of a city I ever heard," said I. And then I asked his advice about my window-boxes. He took an immense interest in them; even brought out a seedman's catalogue from his desk and went so thoroughly into the subject as made me in time imagine that we were dealing with acres instead of inches.
So now I have bought all my bulbs. It was a great day when they were planted. With a table fork which Moxon obtained from the housekeeper's kitchen we prepared our beds, and all the while stood Dandy with his fore-paws on the window-sill watching the operation with breathless interest.
As I put them in, covering the mould over their little brown bodies, I looked up occasionally at Moxon, who stood by with his mouth wide open.
"Marvellous thing, isn't it, Moxon?" said I, "to think that these little bulbs are going to bring up yellows and blues and pinks, all the colors of the rainbow, just out of themselves?"
"I was thinking that, sir," said he, "though I don't know as it's any more wonderful than a woman having babies."
That remark is characteristic of Moxon, who has sentiment to his finger-tips and imagines that he never shows a sign of it.
"My God!" said I. "You don't mean to compare the two! One's a catastrophe—it'll be a very different matter when these crocuses and tulips are delivered of their flowers."