"He was in a stable, and pinched rabbits from a woman called 'Lowsy Lucy'! That's _his_ life story!" "And yet he wrote all that about coming to these yellow sands and then holding hands! But he can't really be better than Tennyson. He never wrote those lines about hollyhocks. Do you remember? Like this: _Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily!_ Those are the beautifullest lines all over anywhere!" "A bit of a tongue twister, eh? Makes you pronounce all your aitches like "hammer hammer hammer on the hard high road!" Harry blasphemed, twinkling. "Oh don't, don't!" exclaimed Philip, a catch of pain in his voice. "Anyhow there isn't any philoserphy in those lines! And you don't know what hollyhocks are? How can you like the lines? It's swank!" "I don't know! It might be because I don't know, I like the lines. But I _do_ know it's a flower; and when I see the real flower I'll be glad to see it. But it's got nothing to do with the poetry. That's just by itself: _Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily!"_ "Never mind, never mind!" said Harry sapiently, "you'll grow older some day!" "I wonder!" mused Philip. "But look here, what's the time? Crutches! Half-past eight! Got to be in bed at nine! So-long, Mr. Philoserphy!" "So long till next time!" returned the sage, settling himself down to his book. "_O revower!_" As Philip ran along Doomington Road he could not help halting at the floral establishment half-way home which recently had initiated a forlorn crusade against the artistic apathy of the neighbourhood. Already, it was evident, the high ideals of Madame Smythe, Floriste, were being tarnished by the rust of compromise. She had opened her establishment with a blaze of purely floral splendour. There were rose trees entering into bloom, lilies, bunches of garden flowers, democratic pots of geranium and fuchsia, tall tulips, narcissi; and as a subfusc groundwork, wooden boxes of bulbs, manures, weed killers, syringes and packets of seed. It was not long before young vegetables were introduced, ostensibly on the ground that vegetables such as potatoes and peas had a floral as well as a dietetic significance. And now hoary potatoes, full-grown carrots, unblushing turnips, made an almost animal show among the fragility of creeper and flowers. None the less Madame Smythe's shop was the nearest thing to poetry in the concrete that Philip had yet encountered. Not a day passed but that Philip on his return from school flattened his nose against the floristic window-pane, his eyes dazzled with delight, albeit calceolaria and hyacinth equally were mere words to him.