I agreed I was not.

"I want to get at your philosophy," said I.

"I'm not a philosopher," he replied; "I'm a gardener."

"But what do you get out of it?"

He pointed down to the little Lady Grizels in their green pinafores.

"Nothing else?"

He took out a pocket-knife and cut a little twig from a standard rose tree, cut it off just above a tiny red shoot that was thrusting itself forth from the bare, dry wood.

"Preparing a garden," said he, "is like laying the foundations of a perfect city. Every path is a street, every bush is a dwelling-place, every flower is a beautiful being. Sometimes it seems like that. And sometimes it seems like an adventure of Sinbad the Sailor, an engrossing business of dealing with the earth for the treasures she holds. You don't know what colors there are in that dull brown mould until you come to drop into it a little withered seed the size of a pin's head, a magnet, drawing out of the ground colors that no artist would have the courage to mix upon his palette. A little while ago I pruned the rose trees of the front of the house. It was a blazing hot day. I had to get a ladder and lean it up against the wall. When I climbed up the ladder there was a warm breath of air, coming from the bricks, and when I stretched out, leaning right up against it, seeing all those young shoots of the rose tree just bursting with life, it was like leaning up against the world and knowing that the whole scheme of things was perfect."

He had still more to say. I could see that the whole heart of him was full of it, but suddenly he stopped in confusion.

"What did you make me talk like that for?" he asked.

"Just for what I wanted to know," said I. "Your philosophy. It proves what I always believe."

"What's that?"

"Philosophy's not a matter of expediency. You don't evolve a philosophy to help you through life; life evolves it for you, and the only philosophy that counts is one of beauty. But there's something more beautiful than sweet peas."

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