Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"The box tree is a green shrub of greatest use and one of the most
necessary in the garden. There are two sorts, the dwarf box which we
French call Buis A' Artous much used for planting the embroidery of
Parterres. It naturally does not grow very much which makes it called
dwarf box. The other kind is the Box Tree of the woods, which advances
much higher and has bigger leaves which make it fit to form Pallisades
and green Tufts for Garnishing. It comes up in the shade but is a long
time gaining any considerable height. It is put to a great many petty
uses, as making balls--as the climate of France is very different from
that of the Indies in the degree heat _it is better to raise from slips
and layers than to try to sow seed which is a great time coming up_."
The book quite frankly disclosed the terrors as well as the joys of
the game. It was most disconcerting to read of
"The Distempers and Insects that Attack....The great Enemies are
Rabbets, Garden Mise, Moles, Caterpillars, Maybugs, Ants, Snails,
Turks, Canthardies and an abundance of weeds, the names of which are
unknown to us--"
She shouted with youthful laughter as she read it, the echoes of her
merriment sounding through the empty halls. She doubled her little
fist and shook it toward the candle, flickering low in its socket.
"That's what has hidden the garden," she murmured, "that's why I can't
see it--" she wrinkled her nose in disgust. "--Abundance-of-weeds--
Piqueur and Bele will settle you!"
All through the verdant spring, all through the quick hot summer the
girl puzzled over the unanswered riddle--the scheme of the garden.
Piqueur and Bele and Margot toiled valiantly pulling up the myriad
abundance-of-weeds, but in vain. It was not until the resplendent
autumn had passed that she had any inkling of the real pattern. There
came a glorious moonlit night, a chilly night when she snuggled under
the blankets and yawned over the chapter that told her "how to mulch
plants for winter." The wind blew so chill that at midnight she
pattered across the old carpet to make the casement fast. The whole
cleared space below her glistened with the fairy glamour of the first
frost. Under the magic silvery whiteness the lost "parterres and
cabinets and lozenges" with their paths and borders stood out as
clearly in the moonlight as the day when Madame Prudence's workmen had
charted them there. She laughed aloud as she ran back and turned to
the map labelled "The twentieth and laft practife which is the most
superb and which is The Bifected Oval."
"Oh, Oh!" she murmured as she leaned across the stone sill, unmindful
of the cold, to blow a tiny kiss to the fountain cupid, "How stupid I
was not to see! You just live in half the oval and the kitchen garden
and the stables are the other half--"
She could scarcely wait for morning to impart her wonderful news to
Grandy and the others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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