"Yes, pergola. Now just see it. Beautiful green lawn. By the way, you must have this re-turfed, it is quite hopeless; good grass leading straight down to that hedge, no pathway between," and he shuddered. "Do away with the prickly hedge, have a border of bright flowers taking its place; behind that a pergola of roses, through which you get vistas of all the good sprouting green things, and clumps of flowers, hedges of sweet-peas, banks of poppies, and everything bright and beautiful, with suggestions of gooseberry bushes and strawberry beds, and feathery carrots and waving asparagus. Now, how does that sound?"
"Delightful," I replied, sinking on a garden seat with a most doleful sigh, and looking from that picture to the one that lay before me.
"Ah, yes," following my eye, "and don't forget that path; straight, mind you, and slates. There is something about a wet slate bordered with grass that gives you sensations of coolness and repose that really consoles you for the rain. You try it! Now, I daresay I could suggest a good many more things that need doing, but I suppose you won't manage more this autumn."
"It is very kind of you," I began.
"Oh, not at all, not at all. I assure you it is a great pleasure to suggest improvements. Now here you have a little garden, nothing much about it, you may say, but at once I see what can be made of it. My mind is full of the higher vision, until really sometimes it is a shock to me to come back to real earth, as it were, and find how far it is from the ideal."
"Yes, I should think so," I murmured.
"Of course that is what is needed for landscape gardening, to which I gave special attention at one time. Flowers I have not yet taken up; but shrubs! ah, well, I think I won't begin on shrubs, for I have to catch that train."
Then we walked back to the house, and I wished I too had a train to catch that I might never, never look at my garden again.
The Others said I was very depressed for some days, but at last I resolutely faced my garden.