The whole was fenced from the road by a low,
brick-pillared, flint wall, topped with a cast-iron Gothic rail,
picked out in blue and gold.
Tight beds of geranium, calceolaria, and lobelia speckled the
glass-plat, from whose centre rose one of the finest araucarias
(its other name by the way is "monkey-puzzler"), that it has ever
been my lot to see. It must have been full thirty feet high, and
its foliage exquisitely answered the iron railings. Such bijou ne
plus ultras, replete with all the amenities, do not, as I pointed
out to Penfentenyou, transpire outside of England.
A hedge, swinging sharp right, flanked the garden, and above it
on a slope of daisy-dotted meadows we could see Lord Lundie's
tiled and half-timbered summer farmhouse. Of a sudden we heard
voices behind the tree--the fine full tones of the unembarrassed
English, speaking to their equals--that tore through the hedge
like sleet through rafters.
"That it is not called 'monkey-puzzler' for nothing, I willingly
concede"--this was a rich and rolling note--"but on the other
hand--"
"I submit, me lud, that the name implies that it might, could,
would, or should be ascended by a monkey, and not that the ascent
is a physical impossibility.
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