“Yes; a girl I know has taken to that. She starts very early every morning in order to arrange the things in certain shop-windows. It is pleasant work enough, and she gets three hundred a year. But it is rather a bore having to go out at such an unearthly hour, and on the whole I thought landscape gardening preferable.”
“But what is it? How do you do it?” asked Anne, leaning forward and smiling. She was the softest of the sisters, large and fair.
“I lay out gardens for people,” said Claudia. She scented ridicule, and was determined to speak simply.
“Gardens? Gardens on a great scale, I suppose?” put in Philippa. “A landscape means something vast.”
“Oh, not necessarily. Of course one might have to rearrange a park; but your garden, for instance, is a delightful size. And now you know why your river enchanted me. I always wanted to try my hand upon a river.”
“Did I not tell you she was a Radical?” asked Philippa, addressing the others. “Imagine our good, respectable, steady-going river turned out of his centuries-old groove! No, Claudia, we are not going to deliver him up to your tender mercies, and could not if we would. A river—a real river—is a more important personage than you conceive; not to be trifled with even so much as the government of a country.”
“That is what I say,” returned Claudia, smiling. “England is so full of absurd restrictions that, do what you will, you run your head against them.”
“You will have to try the colonies,” said Anne.
“Or a thousand miles or so of prairies.”
Claudia coloured. She had an uncomfortable conviction that her cousin Philippa was mocking.