“Is it true that you’re going to remove the kitchen garden?” said Mamselle Lovisa. “To be sure I don’t know anything, but I have heard folks say that when the apple trees are allowed to grow in the herb beds they bear well, but if one plants sod round them one can’t expect much fruit.” “But dear little Lovisa, I thought you would be glad to have a real garden!” “Glad! Should I be glad that you are destroying the old Mårbacka? Soon we won’t know the place at all.” The Lieutenant thought his sister unusually contentious in this instance, which was the more surprising because she had always loved flowers and cared for all the house plants. But at that time, which was shortly after her engagement had been broken and she was still suffering from the disappointment, he could not say a harsh word to her. All day long she paced the floor of her room and he could hear her restless steps when he sat in the living room reading. He understood that she was not just then quite mistress of herself, and thought it a favourable sign that she took an interest in something outside her own unhappiness. It was better that she should disapprove of his garden than be continually brooding on whether she had been too hasty in sending back the betrothal ring, or whether her fiancé had turned against her because she had put a few leaves of whortleberry in Kaisa Nilsdotter’s bridal-crown. In those days there was an old landscape gardener living in Fryksdalen who in his prime had been head gardener on various large estates. He had the name of being a veritable wizard at garden making, and when anyone contemplated laying out a new garden his advice and assistance were sought. The Lieutenant had asked him to come to Mårbacka, and in the spring, as soon as the frost was out of the ground, the old man appeared with his drawings and prints. A large corps of workmen was placed at his command; quantities of bushes and trees ordered from the Göteborg nurseries had come, and the big work was now started. When the ground had been levelled the gardener and the Lieutenant went about all day staking out grass plots and gravel walks. The old man informed the Lieutenant that it was no longer the custom to follow the severely regular French style. Now the paths must all be winding and the borders and flower beds in easy, graceful lines. What he had in mind for Mårbacka he called the English style; but the Lieutenant rather suspected that the style was the old man’s own and not of foreign origin. In front they laid out a big circular lawn, on one side of which they set out shrubbery in the shape of an egg, and on the other shrubbery in the form of a horn of plenty, while in the middle of the round they planted a weeping ash. Up toward the veranda they staked out a star-shaped flower bed, placing as a guard about it four provence-rose bushes--each on its own little round spot.