Mrs. Ramshorn’s house had formerly been the manor-house, and, although it now stood in an old street, with only a few yards of ground between it and the road, it had a large and ancient garden behind it. A large garden of any sort is valuable, but an ancient garden is invaluable, and this one had retained a very antique loveliness. The quaint memorials of its history lived on into the new, changed, unsympathetic time, and stood there, aged, modest, and unabashed. Yet not one of the family had ever cared for it on the ground of its old-fashionedness; its preservation was owing merely to the fact that their gardener was blessed with a wholesome stupidity rendering him incapable of unlearning what his father, who had been gardener there before him, had had marvellous difficulty in teaching him. We do not half appreciate the benefits to the race that spring from honest dulness. The CLEVER people are the ruin of everything. Into this garden, Bascombe walked the next morning, after breakfast, and Helen, who, next to the smell of a fir-wood fire, honestly liked the odour of a good cigar, spying him from her balcony, which was the roof of the veranda, where she was trimming the few remaining chrysanthemums that stood outside the window of her room, ran down the little wooden stair that led from it to the garden, and joined him. Nothing could just at present have been more to his mind. CHAPTER VIII. THE GARDEN. “Take a cigar, Helen?” said George. “No, thank you,” answered Helen; “I like it diluted.” “I don’t see why ladies should not have things strong as men.” “Not if they don’t want them. You can’t enjoy everything--I mean, one can’t have the strong and the delicate both at once. I don’t believe a smoker can have the same pleasure in smelling a rose that I have.” “Isn’t it a pity we never can compare sensations?” “I don’t think it matters much: everyone would have to keep to his own after all.” “That’s good, Helen! If ever man try to humbug you, he will find he has lost his stirrups. If only there were enough like you left in this miserable old hulk of a creation!” It was an odd thing that when in the humour of finding fault, Bascombe would not unfrequently speak of the cosmos as a creation. He was himself unaware of the curious fact. “You seem to have a standing quarrel with the creation, George! Yet one might think you had as little ground as most people to complain of your portion in it,” said Helen. “Well, you know, I don’t complain for myself. I don’t pretend to think I am specially ill-used. But I am not everybody. And then there’s such a lot of born-fools in it!” “If they are born-fools they can’t help it.”