"Oh, will you? I don't think I shall come to admire your garden then. Why are you so afraid of time? You are young. But I suppose that is the reason."
After I had made the plunge we talked again on this matter.
"Most of these people who write of their gardens own them. They have lived there and will live there always. But in a Rectory garden one is but a stranger and a pilgrim. Don't you feel this?"
"No. We are growing old together, and perhaps it will be given me to stay here; anyway, my garden is better than I found it. Is not that something?"
"Oh, yes," I said discontentedly.
He laughed. "Ah! the spirit will grow; you are cultivating it just as surely as you are the seeds."
"There are plenty of weeds and stones to choke all the seeds everywhere," I answered. "Old Griggs's way of weeding is to chop off the heads, dig everything in again, and for a fortnight smile blandly over his work. Then he says that it is no use weeding, 'Just look at 'em again.'"
"Old Griggs seems to afford you plenty of parables from Nature, anyhow. He is instructive in his way. But can't he be retired?"
"Alas, no! he is a fixture."