But I hadn’t the slightest notion what it was like in its natural state. When once I found it, I soon realised that it stood alone among all the scented wonders. I put some of it at various corners about the garden, because I found it has remarkable healing powers. No matter how dispirited you may be or out of joint with the world, it is only necessary to take a leaf, rub it and sniff it, whereupon the world smiles again, and you realise that, in spite of all, it is good to be alive. You will understand, therefore, how essential it is to have it in handy places, so that weary people, even if they do not know of its unique qualities, may rub against it in passing, and unconsciously come under its spell.
It dies down in the winter, but when spring comes we always look eagerly for the first purple-black shoots pushing up cheerily from the soil.
It has only one fault; it suffers from zeal without discretion. It will not keep within proper bounds. At the present moment I am wondering whether it is better to dig up the bergamot or rout out the peppermint; they are having a hand-to-hand fight for supremacy in one particular flower corner.
I am afraid my needlework was a mere matter of form that morning. Who could glue their eyes to a piece of hemstitching with the whole earth fairly dancing with colour and light around them? I faintly (but not very earnestly) wished that I had brought knitting instead of sewing, because that doesn’t need to be looked at, and you can keep up a semblance of respectable industry while you are watching all the wild things.
I had been feeling rather aggravated with a woman who had written commiserating with my odd predilection for being “buried” in a spot where there was “positively nothing to be seen.” She was really pitying me! Well, I pitied her back, and pitied her hard; had she only known it, she would have been aggravated too. So at least we were quits. She had said that, for her part, she should simply die in such an unsociable place. I took care to be just as sorry for her as she was for me: it was a slight satisfaction to me! It was at this moment that I heard voices of two women talking in the lane, hidden from view by the orchard wall.
“How’s yourself, Mrs. Blake?”
“Only middling.” (We always start our conversations with lugubriousness; it seems indecorous to parade health and happiness before our neighbours!) “I’m in a tearing hurry. I’ve just been to the doctor’s to see if he can’t give me something for my poor Jim’s tooth. It do pester him something cruel. I promised him I’d run all the way there and back; he’ll be raving till I get back.”
“Ah, he won’t get no peace till he has it out, I reckon.”
“The doctor says why don’t he have ’em out and get some new ’uns? But I call it waste. Look at my sister’s husband: cost him a guinea his did! Of course, he got a complete set top and bottom for that, fifty-three teeth altogether I believe he told me, and as natural as you please, I’ll own. But seeing as of course he’s got to take ’em out to eat, I call it spending just for show, even if they do give you a good mouthful for your money.”