I spoke in my ignorance, and I learnt the use of geraniums later on.
His Reverence's Young Man never smiled when I spoke of sending things back to his mother; perhaps he did inside him, for she had a lovely garden and half a dozen gardeners, but still was chief there. I was overcome when I paid her a visit and remembered my offer; but again I spoke in my ignorance and thought it showed the right gardener's spirit, and perhaps it did.
His Reverence's Young Man grew to take the greatest interest in gardening. He was one of my first converts; but I learnt about hellebore from someone else.
And now the Master must be introduced. I cannot tell what particular month he came into my garden, but I remember when I first went into his.
He had a genius for flowers. I do not know if he looked at children and animals with that light of fatherly love in his eyes, but I think it must have been there for all things that needed his care and protection. Flowers, however, were his "dream children."
His was no ideal garden, and he had never written about it. It was scarcely larger or more blessed by fate than mine, but was as perfect as could be. He knew each flower intimately; he had planted each shrub, and I never met a weed or a stone on his borders. He had but little glass, and no groves and copses and woods, or heather, or pine, or any unfair advantages in that way; but when I looked at his herbaceous border in the autumn I could not help thinking of harvest decorations. Such a wealth of colour was piled up, it hardly seemed possible it could all be growing on the spot. From early spring to late autumn a succession of brilliant blooms reigned one after another in that border; to look upon it was indeed "seeing of the labour of one's hands and being satisfied."
And he had said, "There is no reason why you should not have it too."