I glanced at my watch. He was right; I was early; the taxi-drive from Logan International Airport had taken less time than I'd budgeted. With the feeling I was humoring a madman's whim, I remarked, "This is a lovely spot. It will be a pleasure to spend fifteen minutes in the midst of such beauty." The gardener stared at me as though gauging my sincerity; then he looked for a moment as though his leather face might bend into a smile. "Indeed, sir, I've been told by horticulturists of some note that I have the gift of the green thumb," he said. "It's a passion with me, this garden; and the master was himself most alive to the seduction of vegetable beauty. You should have visited us three days ago, sir. I had a band of fifty sacred lilies blooming all at once, those that flower only in the sabbatical year, standing like a field of obscene scarlet-tipped swords. For all their loveliness, I was told by our downwind neighbors, these lilies smelled like a ruptured cesspool. If it is true about their odor, such flowers make a forceful moral sermon, sir, do they not?" "Do you have no sense of smell?" I asked him. "That would seem a considerable handicap to a gardener." "I can drink in beauty with my eyes," he said; "and, since I cannot smell, the sting of the lilies' sermon missed me. Here ..." he gripped my arm with fingers which, though gloved, were hard as forceps "... you can see the lemon-trees in bloom, a pleasing sight seldom come upon in these latitudes." "They're under glass?" I asked. "That's the wonder of it," he said. "They're under the open sky, sir." He led me to a line of bushes twice the height of a man, unpruned, pale-green of leaf, with reddish scion-leaves deep inside the foliage; sweet-smelling flowers, tinted a delicate purple on their underpetals. Seeing them for the first time, I understood why the poet sang his dream of the land where they grow. "Lemon-trees, outdoors, in Massachusetts?" I asked. "They are a new species, no doubt." "No, sir," the gardener said. "I admit it's not easy to persuade lemons to thrive through New England snow and gale; but thrive these do. Don't step any nearer them, sir, if you please. It is not healthy to be too intimate with these trees." "I'm not allergic to citrus fruit," I said. "I'll grant you that, sir, not knowing your personal idiosyncrasies," he said; "but step no closer, or I'll be forced to restrain you." * * * * * Seeing that the man was at least a little mad, I stood quite still and stared at the trees. The leaves, as I said, were rather pale, not at all the linoleum-green of orange-leaves; but the bushes looked quite healthy, and breathed off a thin and lovely fragrance. "Why do you consider your lemon-trees dangerous?" I asked.