"Aren't they!" she cried. "I guess they come from Switzerland, where
they say they have such lovely things. Fancy them against the snow! But
where have they come from? They can't have BLOWN here, can they?"
Then he remembered having set here a lot of little trash of bulbs to
mature.
"And you never told me," she said.
"No! I thought I'd leave it till they might flower."
"And now, you see! I might have missed them. And I've never had a glory
of the snow in my garden in my life."
She was full of excitement and elation. The garden was an endless joy to
her. Paul was thankful for her sake at last to be in a house with a long
garden that went down to a field. Every morning after breakfast she went
out and was happy pottering about in it. And it was true, she knew every
weed and blade.
Everybody turned up for the walk. Food was packed, and they set off,
a merry, delighted party. They hung over the wall of the mill-race,
dropped paper in the water on one side of the tunnel and watched it
shoot out on the other. They stood on the foot-bridge over Boathouse
Station and looked at the metals gleaming coldly.
"You should see the Flying Scotsman come through at half-past six!" said
Leonard, whose father was a signalman. "Lad, but she doesn't half buzz!"
and the little party looked up the lines one way, to London, and the
other way, to Scotland, and they felt the touch of these two magical
places.
In Ilkeston the colliers were waiting in gangs for the public-houses to
open. It was a town of idleness and lounging. At Stanton Gate the iron
foundry blazed. Over everything there were great discussions. At Trowell
they crossed again from Derbyshire into Nottinghamshire. They came to
the Hemlock Stone at dinner-time. Its field was crowded with folk from
Nottingham and Ilkeston.
They had expected a venerable and dignified monument. They found
a little, gnarled, twisted stump of rock, something like a decayed
mushroom, standing out pathetically on the side of a field. Leonard and
Dick immediately proceeded to carve their initials, "L. W." and "R. P.",
in the old red sandstone; but Paul desisted, because he had read in the
newspaper satirical remarks about initial-carvers, who could find no
other road to immortality. Then all the lads climbed to the top of the
rock to look round.
Everywhere in the field below, factory girls and lads were eating
lunch or sporting about. Beyond was the garden of an old manor. It had
yew-hedges and thick clumps and borders of yellow crocuses round the
lawn.
"See," said Paul to Miriam, "what a quiet garden!"
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