We went in search of the head gardener, whom we found digging in a corner of the vegetable garden. He was an austere man, and drew himself up with displeasure when Mollie told him that we had found a weed in the bed of white roses. "White roses!" he repeated. "What white roses?" "The big ones," said Mollie. "I don't know their name." "Don't know their name!" exclaimed Mr. Hobbs in a withering tone. "That's a nice thing to acknowledge! What is your brain for unless you learn the names of things? The big white rose is a Frau Karl Druschki, and don't you forget it. But you are a good girl to come and tell me about the weed. What weed was it now?" "It was a dandelion," said Mollie promptly. But as we went away she confided to me that she only _hoped_ it was a dandelion.[16] "I don't know anything about flowers," she said, "and don't want to. I shan't have to bother about all that sort of thing until I get older, and have to have a garden of my own." "Haven't you got a garden of your own?" I asked her. She looked at me with eyes full of surprise. "Why, I'm only twelve," she said. Something in her expression, and the memory of Miriam's look when I had mentioned the garden, warned me not to pursue the subject. There was some mystery here--it would almost seem some mystery of sex. I must reserve my enquiries for Edward. We came to a large pool in the lower part of the garden. It was bordered with irises and reeds and other water-loving plants. "I say!" exclaimed Mollie, "would you like to fish?" I thought the suggestion a good one. I wanted to get some information out of Mollie, and I could not expect a child of her age to sit down in a chair and talk, even if the servants should permit us to do so undisturbed. "I'll go and ask Sir Herbert to get us some worms and rods," she said, and ran off on her active black-stockinged legs. She came back presently with the under-gardener, who carried a couple of rods and a tin of bait, and looked at me a little suspiciously as he said: "Now, Mollie, if you catch anything, you've got to eat it. There's to be no throwing back of fish into the pond." Mollie promised that we would eat anything that we might catch, and Sir Herbert went back to his work. When we were fairly settled, watching our floats, I said: "This is rather jolly, isn't it? Do your cousins, who are poor, have such a good time as you do?" "Oh, much better," she replied. "They can go and fish in the parks if they want to, with their schoolfellows. I wish mother would let me go to school. Tom does, and I don't see why I shouldn't." "But you can have your friends to play with you here, can't you?" "I do sometimes. But they are not allowed to come very often; their mothers don't like it." "Why not?" "Oh, they think they might get to like _luxury_!" She said this with an air of scorn, such as children use towards ideas of their elders which strike them as absurd. "But they don't get to like luxury," I hazarded.