Without a word Halfman shook his arm free and rejoined Evander, who was moving slowly along a pathway leading towards an enclosure of fantastically clipped yews. Hearing the footsteps behind him, Evander halted till Halfman joined him.
“How the devil came you to fathom flower knowledge?” Halfman asked. Evander smiled faintly.
“I would rather you unsaddled the devil from your question,” he answered, rebuking in his mind a woman; “but I have always loved gardens. You have one here who is skilled in topiary,” and he pointed towards the trim yew hedge they were approaching.
“Those are the green walls of my lady’s pleasaunce,” Halfman answered, “and the learned in such trifles call them mighty fine. But all I know of woodcraft is hatcheting me a path through virgin forest.”
“Where, indeed, your topiarist would be ill at ease,” Evander answered. “But I pray you let us retire, lest we intrude upon your lady.”
“Never fear for that,” said Halfman. “My lady is busy enough in-doors to-day, setting her house to rights, and you should not miss the comeliest nook in all the domain.”
As he spoke he passed under an archway of clipped yew, and, Evander following, the pair came upon a grassy space entirely girdled with yew hedges, the sight of which instantly justified to Evander the praise of his companion. The enclosure made a circle some half an acre in size of the greenest turf imaginable, orderly bordered with seats of white marble and belted all about with the black greenness of the yew-tree hedge, which was fashioned like an Italian colonnade. The arches afforded vistas of different and delightful prospects of the park at every quarter of the card—woodland, savanna-like lawns, flower-gardens, kitchen-gardens, and orchards in their pride.
“This is a lovely place,” protested Evander. “One might sit here and dream of seeing the shy wood-nymphs flitting through these aisles—if one had no better thoughts for one’s idleness,” he added. Halfman laughed.
“There peeped out the Puritan,” he said. “I had lost him this long while, but run him to earth in my lady’s pleasaunce. Yet you are a queer kind of Puritan, too. You can fence like a Frenchman, you can play bowls as Father Jove plays with the globes of heaven, and you can ride like Diomed, the jolly Greek, who knew that horses could be stridden as well as driven.”
Evander, who had seated himself and had been tracing cabalistic signs on the grass with his staff, looked up into his companion’s face.