I myself had been going to tell her, when I could get a word in, that it was too late for most of the things she had named.
But Ursula, who had never done any vegetable gardening, was still sceptical. That was why I suggested that we should consult the obliging manager at Carter’s, in Queen Victoria Street, as we often did over our gardening woes.
Just ahead of us in the shop, when we got there, was an elderly gentleman who wanted some grass seed; he asked if they would tell him how to start a lawn next spring.
It was in the middle of the day—a very busy time for a shop of this kind, when city men are on their way to or from lunch, and seize a few extra minutes to buy their seeds. The shop was full—it looked as though every scrap of land within the twelve-mile radius was going to be put under cultivation—and the assistants had all their work to serve everyone as quickly as they wanted to be served.
The Elderly Gentleman was apparently the only one who was not in a hurry; so he asked the most minute questions, and the manager gave him copious directions, from preparing the ground at the start, right up to marking it off for tennis, when it was in its prime (though, judging by the small packet of seed the E. G. had bought, the lawn would never support a tennis-net).
Then by the time the shop was quite packed, and when everything that was possible appeared to have been said about planting and maintaining a lawn—including keeping it free from moss, the best way to trim the edges, the law with regard to trespassing fowls, and the careful tying of black cotton over the newly-planted seeds to keep off the birds—the E. G. asked what he should do when daisies came up? The manager said patiently that his firm’s grass seeds didn’t produce daisies; but as the E. G. seemed to worry about daisies, he was told how to get rid of daisies.
At last he really went, reluctantly, I admit; but the other customers—who had all become so engrossed in his lawn that they couldn’t remember what they had come in to buy for themselves—heaved a sigh of relief.
Slowly he made his way to the middle of the wide crossing just in front of the shop. You knew by his hesitating walk that there was another question he had meant to ask, but he couldn’t recall it for the moment.