"It is a comfort to find some people, and clever people withal, even more ignorant than I am. Snowdrops and scillas."
"Oh! I see, you are making progress, at least, I beg pardon, _they_ are. I positively see some white."
"Now can _you_ tell me what are hellebores?"
"But wait a bit, I have heard of them, I really have. Isn't it deadly nightshade, or something like that?"
"It is worse to know wrong than not at all."
"But if you don't know, how do you know I am wrong?"
"Because they form a complete garden in February and March--there!"
"A complete garden! How wonderful. Doesn't anyone know? Doesn't Griggs?"
"I haven't asked him, of course he wouldn't know. Here he is, we will see what he says. Griggs, do you know what flower is called hellebore?"
Griggs had no spade and no mud handy; he was very much nonplussed.
"El-bore!--did you say? Whoi, el-bore? Don't seem to have 'eeurd of 'em before; not by that name leastways. You never can tell in these days; lot o' noo-fangled words they call 'em. Oi might know it right 'nuff if you could show me. Dessay it's a furriner. I must be goin'."
He wandered down the garden. There was not much I could give him to do, but I knew from my gardening books that he should be trimming trees, or marking those to come down, or cutting stakes, and lots of other useful things. I possessed no woods, or groves, or copses, however, so I gave Griggs over unreservedly to his Reverence, and he dug and banked up celery.
"Shall I write and ask my mother?" said the Young Man. "She is quite a gardener, you know; and when they divide up roots--as they do, don't they?--she would send you some, I am sure. Geraniums and fuchsias and--and lilies. They always divide them up, don't they? and throw away half."
"I don't think they throw away half, not always. But would she really? It would be awfully kind; and I might send her things when I had anything to send. Only I don't want geraniums; I can't bear them, and old Griggs has filled our one and only frame with nothing else. They seem to me a most unnecessary flower."
I spoke in my ignorance, and I learnt the use of geraniums later on.
His Reverence's Young Man never smiled when I spoke of sending things back to his mother; perhaps he did inside him, for she had a lovely garden and half a dozen gardeners, but still was chief there. I was overcome when I paid her a visit and remembered my offer; but again I spoke in my ignorance and thought it showed the right gardener's spirit, and perhaps it did.