The selection, as it turned
out, was not altogether a happy one, because the garden, when abandoned
by its former owner, had run to seed most liberally, and the whole of
its area appeared to be impregnated with a variety of those seeds which
give the most trouble to the new possessor of an old garden. Anyone
with the real gardening instinct appears to have no difficulty in
distinguishing between weeds and otherwise, even on their first
appearance in shape of a microscopic green shoot; but flowers are not
weeds, and Mary had a good deal of trouble to distinguish between the
self-planted growths of nasturtiums, foxgloves, marigolds,
forget-me-nots, and other flowers, and the more prosaic but useful
carrots and spring onions which Mary had introduced. Probably a good
many onions suffered the penalty of bad company, and were sacrificed in
the belief that they were flowers; but on the whole the new garden did
well, and began to show the trim rows of green shoots which afford such
joy to the gardening soul. The shoots grew rapidly, and as time passed
uneventfully and the section remained unmoved, the garden flourished
and the vegetables drew near to the day when they would be fit for
consumption.
Mary gloated over that garden; he went to a world of trouble with it,
he bent over it and weeded it for hours on end; he watered it
religiously every night, he even erected miniature forcing frames over
some of the vegetable rows, ransacking the remains of the broken-down
hamlet for squares of glass or for any pieces large enough for his
purpose.
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