As Kate entered, a moss rose which wandered at its will caught her skirt, and the General cut a blossom which she fastened in her breast, and surely there is no flower so winsome and fragrant as this homely rose.
"Like yourself, Miss Carnegie," and the General rallied his simple wit for the occasion, "very sweet and true, with a thorn, too, if one gripped it the wrong way." Whereat he made believe to run, and had the better speed because there were no gravel walks with boxwood borders here, but alleys of old turf that were pleasant both to the touch and the eye.

In the centre where all the ways met he capitulated with honours of war, and explained that he had intended to compare Kate to a violet, which was her natural emblem, but had succumbed to the temptation of her eyes, "which make men wicked, Kit, with the gleam that is in them." "Is n't it a tangle ?" Which it was, and no one could look upon it without keen delight, unless he were a horticultural pedant in whom the appreciation of nature had been killed by parterres.

There was some principle of order, and even now, when the Pleasaunce is a wilderness, the traces can be found.

A dwarf fruit tree stood at every corner, and between the trees a three-foot border of flowers kept the peas and potatoes in their places.

But the borders were one sustained, elaborate, glorified disorder.