Ursula was sitting on a pile of logs under a big fir tree inside the orchard gate—oh yes, there are firs in the orchard, and lilacs, and daffodils, and snowdrops, and a huge Wellingtonia, and a trickle of water with forget-me-nots and mint on its brink; we’re not at all particular about classification. She was darning a stocking, and it seemed a lengthy job. Not that there was any large, vulgar gash in the stocking; it was merely suffering from general war-time debility, and was one of those that you can go on and on darning, and still find more thin places to run up and down.
Have you ever noticed what a snare a stocking of this description can be? You can sit at it for an hour or so, until it seems easier to go on darning it than to bestir yourself to do anything else. In the end, you haven’t accomplished much, considering the time you’ve been about it, but you have acquired a large dose of the virtuous and exemplary feeling that is always the outcome of stocking-darning.
Ursula had got like that, though I wouldn’t have you think I under-estimated her efforts, for it was my apparel she was darning.
“I often think that a garden embodies all the philosophy of life,” she replied to my query, in a detached way, as she closely inspected the stocking foot drawn over her hand, in order to pounce upon any further signs of impending dissolution.
“I seem to fancy I’ve heard that——”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt someone has said it before me. I’ve noticed over and over again that people plagiarize my really cleverest remarks before I’ve actually had time to say them myself; and I think something ought to be done to prevent the infringement of copyright in this barefaced way. But all the same, whether anyone has, or has not, already helped themselves to this unique creation of my brain, the fact remains that I thought it out for myself, alone and unaided. And the more I meditate upon it, the more I notice what heaps of things in the garden resemble life.”
“As for example——?”
“Well, slugs, for instance, and the bindweed, and the rabbits, and the broad beans. They all seem to typify that here we have no abiding anything.”
I agreed mournfully, as I thought of the succulent, hopeful-looking scarlet runners that the slugs had eaten right through the tender main stems close to the ground. It was a sad awakening for us the day we found a few score of limp and dying remains, where over-night we had watered as promising a row of youngsters as one could have wished to see. To our grieving spirits, it seemed as though it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if they had eaten the leaves and left us the stems, at least more leaves might have grown, whereas now——!
And the bindweed—where could you find a more striking analogy to original sin? Flaunting beautiful flowers (which I greatly love), yet all the while spreading wicked roots out of sight, choking everything it lays hold of, turning up in the most unlooked-for places—but there is no need to write more under this heading; a healthy crop of bindweed (and I never knew one that wasn’t most irritatingly healthy) could give points to a preacher every Sunday in the year, and then have enough to spare for the week-night services. And when he had done with bindweed, he could start afresh on mint.