I had scarce finished filling in the temporary trench, and was setting the poor uprooted plants back into the bed, with my back turned, when I heard a simultaneous shout from Peter and Stella.
“One, two, three–and over she goes!” cried Stella.
I faced around just in time to see the first line of the water crawling over the top of the dam, and a second later it splashed on the stones below; behind it came the waterfall.
Stella was dancing up and down. “Oh, it’s a real waterfall!” she cried. “I’ve got a real waterfall all my own! Come on downstream and look back at it!”
From the grove below it certainly did look pretty, flashing in the morning sun. “And when there are iris blossoms, great Japanese iris, nodding over it!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, can’t we plant those right away?” she asked.
“No,” said I. “Gardens are like Rome, I’m afraid.”
We went back and surveyed our pool at close range. It was clearing now. But the second pile of earth remained to be removed from the west side. Peter and I carted that off in wheelbarrows at once, dumping part of it into the hole where we had dug the sand, and the rest into a heap behind some bushes upstream for future compost. Then we climbed the orchard slope for dinner. Midway we looked back. There glistened our pool, a twenty-foot brown crystal mirror, with the four flower beds all askew about it, the ragged weeds and bushes pressing them close, and beyond it only the rough ground I had cleared with a brush scythe, and the scraggly trees by the wall.
“Alas” said I, “now we’ve built the pool, we’ve got to build a whole garden to go with it!”
“But it tinkles! Hear it tinkle!” cried Stella.