Mr. Basket welcomed the Major cordially, with a dozen rallying comments on his healthy rural complexion, and carried him off to admire the garden while Mrs. Basket enlarged her preparations for dinner at five o'clock. The garden was indeed calculated to excite admiration, less for its flowers--for Mr. Basket confessed ruefully that very few flowers would grow with him--than for a hundred ingenuities by which this defect was concealed. "And the beauty of it is," announced Mr. Basket, with a wave of his hand towards a black-and-white edging compound of marrow bones and the inverted bases of wine bottles, disposed alternately, "it harbours no slugs. It saves labour, too; you would be surprised at the sum it used to cost me weekly in labour alone. But," he went on, "I pin my faith to oyster shells. They are, if in a nautical town one may be permitted to speak breezily, my sheet anchor." He indicated a grotto at the end of the walk. "Maria and me did the whole of that." "Mrs. Basket is fond of gardening?" hazarded the Major. "She's extraordinary partial to oysters," Mr. Basket corrected him. "We made it a principle from the first to use nothing but what we consumed in the house. That don't apply to the statuary, of course, which I have purchased at one time and another from an Italian dealer who frequents the Hoe. The material is less durable than one might wish; but I could not afford marble. The originals of these objects, so the dealer informs me, are sold for very considerable sums of money; in addition to which," went on Mr. Basket, lucidly, "he carries them in a tray on his head, which, in the case of marble, would be out of the question; and, as it is, how he contrives to keep 'em balanced passes my understanding. But he is an intelligent fellow, and becomes very communicative as soon as he finds out you have leanings for Art. Here's a group, for instance--Cupid and Fisky--in the nude." "But, excuse me--" The Major stepped back and rubbed his chin dubiously, for some careful hand had adorned the lovers with kilts of pink wool in crochet work, and Psyche, in addition, wore a neat pink turnover. "The artist _designed_ 'em in the nude, but Maria worked the petticoats, having very decided views, for which I don't blame her. It keeps off the birds, too: not that the birds could do the same damage here as in an ordinary garden." "I can well believe that."