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Tony pronounced the plan a "jolly" one, and, leaving his work, followed his young mistress to the summer-house, for she could not wait one minute. "What must we do first?" she asked, as they stood looking in at the dim, dusty room, full of garden tools, bags of seeds, old flower-pots, and watering-cans. "Clear out the rubbish, miss," answered Tony.
In a garden flooded with sunshine and balmy with the fragrance of mignonette and vervain, where broad sunflowers erect their black discs fringed with gold, two brothers with fan-shaped beards, their brass-mounted spectacles astride on their flat noses, and arrayed in green gardening aprons, are plying enormous watering-cans; while, in the green and cool half-twilight under the shadowy trees, big, rubicund brothers walk up and down, reading their red-edged breviaries in black leather bindings.
She had been very quiet for some time, absorbed in a boxful of the packets of flower-seeds, with gay pictures outside. "Esther, may I have a packet of seeds? and one of those dear dinkey little watering-cans? May I, Essie? Do say 'yes, please do." Poppy was not only fascinated, but she was possessed by a sudden, brilliant idea which the packets of seeds had suggested.
In the great square, where stands the new church, I again saw some shops like those I had seen in Rotterdam, in which all the articles which can be strung together are hung up either outside the door or in the room, so forming wreaths, festoons, and curtains of shoes, for example, or of earthen pots, watering-cans, baskets, and buckets which dangle from the ceiling to the ground, and sometimes almost hide the floor.
The sailors were sluicing the deck with great hoses, and sprinkling it with little watering-cans of disinfectant. Up on the fo'c'sle her deck-chair was side by side with another on which "L. F." was stencilled; after breakfast she went there with a book, expecting Louis to follow her.
A prolonged and critical gaze showed them not only all the things already mentioned, but dear little rough red pitchers which would hold just half a pint, and a larger size which would hold a pint; packets of flower-seeds with gay pictures on the outside, and only a penny each; the pitchers were only a penny and twopence; there were the dearest little watering-cans too, and fancy handkerchiefs with a nursery rhyme round the border, and funny little books, with roughly done pictures in the brightest of colours, and money-boxes, some like little houses, others representing miniature letter-boxes.
Microscopes, phials, shallow trays bristling with sprouting seeds, watering-cans, note-books, buckets of tepid water, jars brimming with chemical solutions, blockaded the legitimate and natural runways of chamber-maid, parlour-maid, and housekeeper; a loud scream now and then punctured the scientific silence, recording the Hibernian discovery of some large, green caterpillar travelling casually somewhere in the house.
But what made the garden most cheerful and gave it a lively air, was the continual coming and going in it, from early morning till evening; people with wheelbarrows, shovels, and watering-cans swarmed round the trees and bushes, in the avenues and the flower-beds, like ants. . . . Kovrin arrived at Pesotsky's at ten o'clock in the evening.
Most of them had little gardens in front or around them, and the sun-burned fellows might be seen as we passed kneeling in their shirt-sleeves with their spuds and their watering-cans in the midst of their flower-beds.
Tony pronounced the plan a "jolly" one, and, leaving his work, followed his young mistress to the summer-house, for she could not wait one minute. "What must we do first?" she asked, as they stood looking in at the dusty room, full of garden tools, bags of seeds, old flower-pots, and watering-cans. "Clear out the rubbish, miss," answered Tony.
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