We took them up. Jim was impressed with my sorrow. We planted those we had disturbed in the border in front as an edging.
"It won't matter so much here, they don't strike the eye, because other things are coming here in clumps, but for those two beds!"
I had nightmares of tiny tin soldiers dressed in green who marched round and round and disappeared, and then two bare brown beds loomed up like giant's eyes, and the Others all shouted,
"Isn't it hideous? What did you do it for? Oh, Mary, what a mess you have made of it!"
Next afternoon Jim and I, his Reverence and the Young Man—who also joined the Council—calculated exactly how many plants would be required to really fill those beds with a desirable effect. I could hardly believe it, the calculation ended in two hundred for each bed. I sat down on the grass and looked and looked as though looking would make the necessary quantity appear.
"It can't be done," I moaned in the bluest despair. "I don't possess four hundred of anything; so there!"
"You might make a kind of pattern," began the Young Man.
"I hate a kaleidoscopic effect," I growled.