There were flowering shrubs and beautiful conifers, a great mulberry-tree on the mossy lawn, and a huge red brick wall all round, literally covered with trained trees, which in their seasons were masses of white bloom, or glowing with purple and golden plums, and light red, black, or yellowy pink cherries, and great fat pears, while, facing the south, there were dozens of trees of peaches, nectarines, and downy golden apricots.
As to the apples, they grew by the bushel, almost by the ton; and for strawberries and the other lower fruits there was no such garden near.
Then there was Helen’s conservatory, always full of sweet-scented flowers, and the vinery and pits, where the great purple and amber bunches hung and ripened, and the long green cucumber and melon came in their good time.
But Dan’l grumbled, as gardeners will.
“Blights is offle,” he said. “It’s the blightiest garden I ever see, and a man might spend all his life keeping the birds down with a gun.”
But Dan’l did not spend any part of his life, let alone all, keeping the birds down with a gun. The doctor caught him shooting one day, and nearly shot him out of the place.
“How dare you, sir?” he cried. “I will not have a single bird destroyed.”
“Then you won’t get no peace, sir, nor not a bit of fruit.”
“I shall have the place overrun with slugs and snails, and all kinds of injurious blight, sir, if you use that gun. No, sir, you’ll put nets over the fruit when it’s beginning to ripen. That will do.”
The doctor walked away with Helen, and as soon as they were out of sight, behind the great laurustinus clump, Helen threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him for saving her pet birds.