These reflections, and I notice you may reflect on most irrelevant matter in a garden, were called forth by a boy-man who kindly took me in to dinner one evening. I soon discovered he had a little "diggings" and was going in for gardening "like anything." Yet was my soul not drawn to him. "Bulbs, oh, rather! Had a box over from Holland the other day, just a small quantity, you know. Mine isn't a large place, but five thousand or so ought to fill it up a bit; make a mass of colour, that's what I go in for. Told my man to plant 'em in all over, thick as bees. Then I had great luck. Dropped in at an auction in the City just in the nick of time, got a box-load of splendid bulbs for half-a-crown—worth a guinea at the very least—shoved them all in too. I shall have a perfect blaze, I tell you. Like you to come and look me up in April if you go in for that kind of thing."
But I hated the boy-man. Five thousand bulbs! without a second thought. And then—according to the rule that works so invariably among material goods, "to him that hath shall be given"—this aggressive youth also buys a guinea's worth of bulbs for half-a-crown. Think what I would have given to be at that auction. But women can't "drop in" in the City.
Towards the end of February my snowdrops made their appearance. The scillas followed a little later and with less regularity. They were not quite the perfect sheet I had dreamt of, but each little bulb did its duty manfully and raised one slender stem with its bell-like head. One at every few inches over a space of some yards was not wealth; and I almost wept when some of them were sacrificed for the drawing-room. The Others said, "A garden should grow flowers for the house. Who wanted them out there in the cold, where no one would see them!" But I did, for out there in the cold they lived for weeks and in the warm room a few days faded them. I must have more and more so that we may all be satisfied. In the Master's garden I found sixteen varieties of snowdrops, not very many of each, but he has no Others. What I longed for was quantity; and as for quality, each snowdrop holds its own, I think.
Up through the softened grass came the strong, pointed leaves of the daffodils. My mass of gold promised to be very regular, but the small crocus leaves were harder to find, and they had no sign of yellow points as yet. And the anemones! What had happened to them? I nearly dug them up to see.
Were the buds on the trees swelling? The birds were twittering busily on the branches, as though they knew their covering would not be long delayed, but the little brown knobs, so shiny and sticky on the chestnuts, appeared hardly to have gained in size since they pushed off the old leaf in the autumn. For in the time of scattering wind and falling leaf it is well to remember that it is the coming bud which loosens the hold of the old leaf. Life, and not death, which makes the seasons and the world go round.