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Fortunately it was a success for him; all the full-blown peonies, who did not understand much of his poetry, thought him a handsome man, with his blue eyes, and their ardent, melancholy glance; and they applauded him as much as they could without bursting their very tight gloves. They surrounded him and complimented him.
His success was wonderful, and all the more so that for the last few years the flower-garden, at least, had been allowed to take its own way as to growing and blossoming, and bade fair when they came to be a thicket of balsam, peonies, hollyhocks, and other hardy village favourites.
The peonies puffed themselves up in order to be larger than the roses, but size is not everything! The tulips had the finest colours, and they knew it well, too, for they were standing bolt upright like candles, that one might see them the better. In their pride they did not see the little daisy, which looked over to them and thought, "How rich and beautiful they are!
"I'll tell you what you can do for me," I said, with a sudden inspiration about getting rid of him, for the red-headed Peckerwood had promised to come and put some kind of hoodoo earth around the peonies and irises and pinks in my garden, also to bud some kind of a new rose on one of the old blush ones, and I wanted the place quiet so he would venture out of his lair.
"I could," he returned, "be persuaded from it, or at least to postpone it. If by any chance I were invited to luncheon in a certain garden an old-fashioned garden, with box and peonies, and," he raised his head to look down over the flowers "and some queer purple things like bells whose name I have forgotten, under a trellis of roses, with " "Me," she interrupted, with a laugh.
One of the two children owning that name approached, snub-nosed, black-eyed, with cheeks like peonies. "This little girl, my Mary Anne, was as pale as you, over-study; and now, my dear child, you must try and steal a little of her colour. Don't you think my Mary Anne is like her papa, Mr. Chapman?"
Her eye lost nothing; and as she made for the tent the chintz peonies flowed around her, and her step was surprisingly light. We passed through the sunbonnets and entered where the music played. "The precious blessed darlings!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands. "This will do for the Golden Daughters," she rapidly added; "yes, this will distinctly do."
Sometimes Peter would get a hook tied to the end of a long string, and amuse himself with what he called fishing, that is to say, he would throw out his line, and try to get it tangled in the slight branches of some shrub, and draw it up, with a few of the flowers attached; but with all his fishing he never got up any thing worth having: the utmost being a torn cabbage-rose, and two or three shattered peonies, leaf and root and all.
Clumps of stately hollyhocks and scarlet peonies; roses of every hue, purple, blush, gold-color, and white, were showering down their leaves on the grassy turf; honeysuckles climbed and clambered over arbors; and great, stately tufts of virgin-white lilies exalted their majestic heads in saintly magnificence. The garden was Miss Grace Seymour's delight and pride.
Rob rose from his knees, flicked the dust off his trousers, and cleared his throat in that dry sepulchral manner which people adopt when they long to say something sharp and cutting, but are too high-minded to allow themselves to do so. Then he pushed his cap back from his head, whistled three bars of a popular tune, and said politely: "There are some pink peonies coming out in the drive.
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