“ The snow had all disappeared, and she saw ahead of her a little spring bubbling out of a rock, and gurgling along till it ran off a little happy brook.
When she reached the spring she saw, seated on a rock near by, a beautiful little creature in soft fleecy white, that floated about her like a cloud. She wore a scarf that looked like a rainbow; stars twinkled in her hair, and in her hands she held a bow like a new moon.
“You certainly must have come from the clouds,” said Tina, “for I never saw anything like you before.” ”

“ The attack, too, is as erratic; it will hammer hard upon the kitchen while not a drop falls on the verandah, or a great slant will sweep down the nearest valley while we look on in dry security from the shelf. Here in the garden a wall of mist will often surround me, with the sun shining brightly inside; it turns the shelf into a room, and makes one think of the impalpable barrier of one’s environment, possible to break in any direction but never broken, always there, the bound of one’s horizon and the limit of one’s activities. I wonder if Tiglath-Pileser will call that far-fetched. ”

“ It is itself like a little fir-tree with flat spreading branches of blossom, especially when it stands in groups as they do, and the sun slants upon it giving the sprays an edge of brighter gold so that it is the most luminous thing in the garden. And the warm scent of it, holding something so far beyond itself and India, something essential, impregnated with the solace that one’s youth and its affections are not lost, but only on the other side of the world!
Another delightful thing about the goldenrod is the way the bees and butterflies instantly found it out. ”

“ I have the world very much to myself, most of the mountains when I can see them, and all the garden. And it is full of rewards and satisfactions, this rainy world. The wind that pushes the clouds up here blows over a thousand miles of sun and sand and draws a balm from the desert to mingle with its cool dampness, delicious to breathe, like a cooled drink to the lungs. It cannot be tasted in the house because of the prevailing flavour of carpets and curtains. ”

“ For some time I have been vainly revolving the matter; the world seems so full of desirable articles that one does not want; but here an inspiration visits me—I will have another window in the breakfast-room. There is plenty of room for it, nothing but a wall in the way. Where this blank wall, covered with wall-paper, now blocks the vision, another square of garden shall appear; it will let in a line of blue hill, most of the pencil-cedar, a corner of the rose-bushes, and a whole company of poppies and corn-bottles. ”

“ As a matter of fact Atma had freshly turned the earth. I hold to that in the garden; it seems to me a parallel to good housekeeping. The new-dug mould makes a most enhancing background; and an empty bed, if it is only freshly made, offers the mind as much pleasure as a gay parterre. It is the sense, I suppose, of effort expended and care taken, and above all it is a stretch of the possible, a vista beyond the realized present which is as valuable in a garden as it is in life. Oh no, not as valuable. In life it is the most precious thing, and it is sparingly accorded. ”

“ It is time now to look forward, time to provision the garden against the greedy spring, and to make plans. In all my plans the paling figures largely; it is a hand-rail between us and eternity, naturally things look well against it. Next year we are going to have hollyhocks, single and double, pink and rose and white, in a rampart all along the paling as it follows the sweep of the shelf, and spraying thickly out from these the biggest and whitest marguerites that will consent to come up, and along the border the broad blue ribbon of forget-me-nots. ”

“ Even on the shelf it is hard enough to cope with, creeping up, licking and lipping the garden through the paling; but out upon the public khud-sides it is unchecked and insatiable. We hate the jungle; it is so patient and designing and unremitting, so much stronger than we are. Such constant war we have to make upon it merely to prevent it from swallowing us alive. ”

“ The butterflies alight so differently now upon the gravel drive, which is still glistening wet; they pause there on lightest tiptoe with waving wings; a butterfly hates cold feet. The bees are as busy and as cheery as ever; I have wasted the last ten minutes in watching a bumblebee, with the most persuasive hum, sucking the last of their sweetness out of the corn-bottles. The bee clings and the flower drops over; the old pretty garden idyll never loses its power to please. Dear me, if it would always rain and be unattractive I might get something done ”

“ All through its youth and proper blossoming time, which is the rains, it has the pink-and-white prettiness that belongs to that period. When it is over, instead of acknowledging middle age by any form of frumpishness the hydrangea grows delicately green again; it retires agreeably, indistinguishably into leaves, a most artistic pose. That, too, passes in these sharp days when the sun is only gold that glitters, and the hydrangea, taking its unerring tone from the season, turns a kind of purplish rose, and still never drops a petal, never turns a hair. ”

“ The garden is bowed under it; from far and near comes the sound of rushing water down the khud-sides. The great valleys beyond the paling are brimful of grey, impenetrable vapour, as if the clouds, even in dissolving, were too heavy to carry themselves. From my asylum nothing appears to stir or speak except the rain. The day weeps fast and stormily, as if night might fall before she had half deplored enough. ”

“ One’s ears have registered all the voices one loves, and the sound of rain and the wind among the pines, but there is such a din in this world besides that very gladly I could close my ears. One’s feet have been most willing servitors, but one sees so little of them—would you recognize a photograph of your own foot? For me it is the most grievous thing to think that one will be obliged to abandon one’s hands. One’s hands are more than servants, they are friends. ”

“ Even here, in the garden, much too hot the eye of heaven shines. I have abandoned the pencil-cedar, and taken refuge under a trellis covered with a banksia rose, which is thicker, and I have added to my defences a pith hat and an umbrella. Notwithstanding these precautions, we all gasp together to-day in the garden; and I am inclined to agree with the mignonette, which is not as a rule talkative, that this is no longer the summer—exquisite word—that we expect in Simla, but the odious “hot weather” which comes instead in the country down below. ”

“ I am more reconciled to my fate when Atma is in the garden, he is something [27] human to look at and to consider, and he moves with such calm wisdom among the plants. He has a short black curling beard that grows almost up to his high cheek-bones, and soft round brown eyes full of guileless cunning, and a wide and pleasant smile. He is just a gentle hill-man and by religion a gardener, but with his turban twisted low and flat over his ears he might be any of the Old Testament characters one remembers in the pictured Bible stories of one’s childhood. ”

“ They are the young of the world, these hill sons and daughters, and they still remember how the earth they are made of stirs in the spring. It is late evening in my garden now—there has seemed, somehow, no good reason to go in, though one new leaf in the borders has long been just like another—and far down the khud I hear a playing upon the flute. ”

“ Already while we lie in the dark it brushes the curve of the world in that far East which is so much farther, already on a thousand slopes and rice fields the grey dawn is beginning, beginning; and sleeping huts and silent palaces stand emergent, marvellously pathetic to the imagination. Even while I think, it is crisping the sullen waves of the Yellow Sea; presently some outlying reef of palms will find its dim picture drawn, and then we too, high in the middle of Hindostan, will swing under this vast and solemn operation. ”

“ Who indeed should care to hear about every day as it goes on under a conifer in a garden, when that garden—let me keep it back no longer—is a mere patch on a mountain top of the Himalayas? Not even India down below there, grilling in the sun which is not quite warm enough here—that would be easy with snakes and palm-trees [8] and mangoes and chutneys all growing round, ready and familiar; but Simla, what is Simla? An artificial little community which has climbed eight thousand feet out of the world to be cool. ”

“ Man, and especially woman, is a restless being, made [3] to live in houses roaming from room to room, and always staying for the shortest time moreover, if you notice, in the one which is called the garden. The subtle and gratifying law of arrangement that makes the drawing-room the only proper place for afternoon tea operates all through. The convenience of one apartment, the quiet of another, the decoration of another regularly appeal in turn, and there is always one’s beloved bed, for retirement when the world is too much with one. ”

“ The Day is a great elemental creature left in charge of the world for as long, every twenty-four hours, as she can see it. No one day is the same as another; those of the same season have only a family likeness. They express character and temperament, like people, and if you elect to live with them, to throw yourself, as it were, upon their better nature with no other protection than an umbrella, it just makes all the difference. ”

“ The verandah is odorous with lilies, from the tall curling Japanese kind, as opulent as a lily can be to the simple and delicate day lilies that love this world so little. All the lilies [182] live in the verandah except the strenuous peppered orange kind which Tiglath-Pileser declares is not the tiger-lily and which bears itself most gallantly under the rain, standing like a street lamp in the darkest corners, and those strange crimson and yellow Tigridæ (I am sorry I do not know their Christian name) that roll up so unexpectedly with us in the middle of the morning. ”

“ As to the daffodils, they came up a month ago, and I cut them and put them in the drawing-room and thought no more about it.
So the garden for me this morning means roses (dear me, yes, those Gloire de Dijons alone command it for yards in every direction) , and the excitement of it, the pure keen delicious excitement of it, makes me wonder whether a simple life led in a cane chair under a pencil-cedar is not a better background for the minor sensations than the most elaborate existence indoors. But that is another truism; elaboration is always bad, it prevents one’s seeing things. ”

“ I have gone back, I have sat down, I will not be deprived of them; they are necessary to the [2] courage with which every one must face life. I will consider nothing without a cushion, on the hither side of the window, braced by dear familiar bookshelves, and the fender. And Tiglath-Pileser has come, and has quoted certain documents, and has used gentle propulsive force, and behold, because I am a person whose contumacy cannot endure, the door is shut, and I am on the outside disconsolate.
I would not have more sympathy than I can afterwards sustain; I am only banished to the garden. ”

“ To think there was a time when conversation was an art, and curtseying an accomplishment, is to hate our day of monosyllables and short cuts, of sentiments condensed, and opinions taken for granted. One wonders how we came to lose the curtsey, and how much more went with it, how we could ever let it go, to stand instead squarely on our two feet and nod our uncompromising heads, and say what we have to say. I suppose it is one of the things that are quite gone; we can never reaffect it, indeed our behaviour, considered as behaviour, is growing steadily worse. ”

“ When, between showers, we walk abroad upon the shelf my footsteps naturally tend to the border where the wild puce-coloured Michaelmas daisies are thickening among the goldenrod, and his would take the straightest direction to the plumber and the coolies who are making another stone ditch for him. To me there is no joy in repairing a kitchen roof, nor can I ever decide whether it should be tarred or painted, while to Tiglath-Pileser the union of Michaelmas daisies and goldenrod, though pleasing, is a matter of trivial importance. ”

“ An occasional pelting of my person does not trouble me, I am very water-proof; but when drops descend upon this fair page and confuse its sentiments I call loudly for another umbrella. Constantly, no doubt, the cane chair under the conifer grows a stranger spectacle; but my family have become accustomed [178] to it and there is no one else to see. The occasional rickshaw that passes along the road above pays attention to nothing, but goes as fast as it can, with the hood up, like a deranged beetle, and if any one rides past it is with bent head and flying mackintosh. ”

“ I seldom look in vain for at least one flower. Now it is full of buds; the rose of yesterday is only waiting for to-morrow. Maréchal Niels have waited in a different way; they have not put out new roses but they have clung obstinately to the old ones. “At once the silken tassel of my purse tear, and its [203] treasure on the garden throw” is no part of the Maréchal Niels’ philosophy. It hangs a heavy head and clings to every petal, reluctantly giving up day by day a moiety of its sweetness and lasting so unwarrantably long that in sheer indignation I frequently cut off its head. ”

“ I hope my garden thinks better of me than that. The prevailing expression among pansies, by the way, is that of apprehension; I hope this is a botanical fact and not confined to my pansies.
Nothing is more annoying in a small way in this world than to see your tastes reflected in those whom you consider inferior to yourself. You would rather not share anything with such persons, even a preference. ”