"Let me show you," said Mr. Andrewes, crossing the garden. "Look here! there are the pretty little things. I have seen them growing wild in Canada—single ones, that is. The leaves are of a dull green, and when they fade, the whole plant is hardly to be distinguished from Mother Earth—at least, not by a gardener's eye. If you will promise me not to let the gardener meddle with them, unless you are there to look after him, I will give you plants for your beds and borders, my boy."
"Oh, thank you," I said; "I like gardening very much. I should like to garden like you. I've got a spade, and a hoe, and a fork, and I had a rake, but it's lost. But I know papa will give me another; and I can tidy my own beds, so the gardener need not touch them; and if there was a wheelbarrow small enough for me to wheel, I could take my weeds away myself, you know."
And I chattered on about my garden, for, like other children, I was apt to "take up" things very warmly, in imitation of other people; and Mr. Andrewes had already fired my imagination with dreams of a little garden in perfect order and beauty, and tended by my own hands alone; and as I talked of my garden, the parson talked of his, and so we wandered from border to border, finding each other very good company, Rubens walking demurely at our heels. A great many of Mr. Andrewes' remarks, though I am sure they were very instructive, were beyond my power of understanding; but as he closed each lecture on the various flowers by a promise of a root, a cutting, a sucker, a seedling, or a bulb, as the case might be, I was an attentive and well-satisfied listener. I much admired some daffodils, and Mr. Andrewes at once began to pick a bunch of them for me.
"Isn't it a pity to pick them?" I said, politely.
"My dear Regie," said Mr. Andrewes, "if ever you see anybody with a good garden of flowers who grudges picking them for his friends, you may be quite sure he has not learnt half of what his flowers can teach him. Flowers are generous enough. The more you take from them the more they give. And yet I have seen people with beds glowing with geraniums, and trees laden with roses, who grudged to pluck them, not knowing that they would bloom all the better and more luxuriantly for being culled."
"Do daffodils flower better when the flowers are picked off?" I asked, having my full share of the childish propensity for asking awkward and candid questions. Mr. Andrewes laughed.
"Well, no. I must confess they are not quite like geraniums in this respect. And spring flowers are so few and so precious, one may be excused for not quite cutting them like summer flowers. But it wouldn't do only to be generous when it costs one nothing. Eh, Regie?"
I laughed and said "No," which was what I was expected to say, and thanked the parson for the daffodils. He pulled out his watch.
"My dear boy, it's luncheon time. Will you come in and have something to eat with me?"
I hesitated; Mrs. Bundle had not spoken of any meal in connection with the ceremony of "dropping in," but, on the other hand, I should certainly like to lunch at the Rectory, I thought. And, indeed, I was hungry.