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Sitting here in my pleasaunce on the lawn, surrounded by a riot of hollyhocks, foxgloves, roses, geraniums, and other English flowers that she described so vividly, and loved so well, I find myself celebrating in my own way the hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Eliot. Lying open beside me on the garden-seat is a very well-worn copy of Janet's Repentance.
There is something sensual in the thought of lotus flowers. Hollyhocks make one think of a bright June Sunday and the way to church!" "Do you suppose that young fool has done anything?" The doctor shrugged. "I don't know. I shouldn't care to express an opinion. I ought to stay the night through; but I'm late now for an operation at the hospital. Good night." He departed, musing.
Then, one morning when I had about got over the bashfulness about the hollyhocks, and had decided to deny them absolutely and stick to it, for a time at least, I happened to pick up Grandmother Nelson's book. It was full time maybe past time for thinning out my sugar-beets and resetting my cosmos.
The petals, buds, and leaves were perfect. There were wonderful roses with pale pink outer petals and deeper-colored hearts. There were pink mallows that seemed as if they must have been cut from the bushes bordering Santa Monica road. There were hollyhocks of white and gold, and simply perfect tulips. Linda never before had seen such a treasure candy box.
Perhaps it was a case of telepathy, for, with her hand hovering over Marjorie's hollyhocks, Miss Ashwell seemed to change her mind and took up instead the bluebells: "Bells from a crew of pirates bold That sail the 'Jolly Susan, With bells the time is always told When our good ship's a-cruisin, Heave-aho, my laddies, oh, All the bells are swinging, Flower-bells and ship bells, for your wedding ringing."
As she rode slowly down the lane, with Keriway escorting her as far as its gate, she looked round at what had seemed to her, a short while ago, just a picturesque old farmstead, a place of bee-hives and hollyhocks and gabled cart-sheds; now it was in her eyes a magic city, with an undercurrent of reality beneath its magic.
She gathered a little nosegay of sweet-williams for Ruth, who was over among the hollyhocks, then she said shyly: "What shall I pick for you?" "Anything you like, Miss Ainslie. I am at a loss to choose." She bent over and plucked a leaf of rosemary, looking at him long and searchingly as she put it into his hand. "For remembrance," she said, with the deep fire burning in her eyes.
Beyond the high bank of hollyhocks and the further hedge of dark yew, clipped into fantastic form, one could catch a glimpse of the old house, with its steep sloping roof, its many gables, its whitened walls, lined and crossed by the old timbers. The hum of the bees was in the air, heavy with the fragrance of many flowers.
There were the tall hollyhocks beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet beans and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction, and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under its low-spreading boughs.
Sometimes the little group lingered there until nearly sundown, between the laburnum bushes and hollyhocks of the old garden, but to-day, Alec's impatient whistle from an upper window signalled her. He waved a letter toward her, calling, excitedly, "It's come, Flip! It's come! I'm to start in the morning. I'm packing my trunk now."
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