WHEN breakfast was over the Doctor took me out to show me the garden.
Well, if the house had been interesting, the garden was a hundred
times more so. Of all the gardens I have ever seen that was the most
delightful, the most fascinating. At first you did not realize how big
it was. You never seemed to come to the end of it. When at last you
were quite sure that you had seen it all, you would peer over a hedge,
or turn a corner, or look up some steps, and there was a whole new part
you never expected to find.
It had everything—everything a garden can have, or ever has had. There
were wide, wide lawns with carved stone seats, green with moss. Over
the lawns hung weeping-willows, and their feathery bough-tips brushed
the velvet grass when they swung with the wind. The old flagged paths
had high, clipped, yew hedges either side of them, so that they looked
like the narrow streets of some old town; and through the hedges,
doorways had been made; and over the doorways were shapes like vases
and peacocks and half-moons all trimmed out of the living trees. There
was a lovely marble fish-pond with golden carp and blue water-lilies in
it and big green frogs. A high brick wall alongside the kitchen garden
was all covered with pink and yellow peaches ripening in the sun. There
was a wonderful great oak, hollow in the trunk, big enough for four men
to hide inside. Many summer-houses there were, too—some of wood and
some of stone; and one of them was full of books to read. In a corner,
among some rocks and ferns, was an outdoor fire-place, where the Doctor
used to fry liver and bacon when he had a notion to take his meals in
the open air. There was a couch as well on which he used to sleep, it
seems, on warm summer nights when the nightingales were singing at
their best; it had wheels on it so it could be moved about under any
tree they sang in. But the thing that fascinated me most of all was a
tiny little tree-house, high up in the top branches of a great elm,
with a long rope ladder leading to it. The Doctor told me he used it
for looking at the moon and the stars through a telescope.
It was the kind of a garden where you could wander and explore for days
and days—always coming upon something new, always glad to find the old
spots over again. That first time that I saw the Doctor’s garden I was
so charmed by it that I felt I would like to live in it—always and
always—and never go outside of it again. For it had everything within
its walls to give happiness, to make living pleasant—to keep the heart
at peace. It was the Garden of Dreams.
One peculiar thing I noticed immediately I came into it; and that was
what a lot of birds there were about. Every tree seemed to have two or
three nests in it. And heaps of other wild creatures appeared to be
making themselves at home there, too. Stoats and tortoises and dormice
seemed to be quite common, and not in the least shy. Toads of different
colors and sizes hopped about the lawn as though it belonged to them.
Green lizards (which were very rare in Puddleby) sat up on the stones
in the sunlight and blinked at us. Even snakes were to be seen.
“You need not be afraid of them,” said the Doctor, noticing that I
started somewhat when a large black snake wiggled across the path right
in front of us. “These fellows are not poisonous. They do a great deal
of good in keeping down many kinds of garden-pests. I play the flute to
them sometimes in the evening. They love it. Stand right up on their
tails and carry on no end. Funny thing, their taste for music.”
“Why do all these animals come and live here?” I asked. “I never saw a
garden with so many creatures in it.”
“Well, I suppose it’s because they get the kind of food they like; and
nobody worries or disturbs them. And then, of course, they know me. And
if they or their children get sick I presume they find it handy to be
living in a doctor’s garden—Look! You see that sparrow on the sundial,
swearing at the blackbird down below? Well, he has been coming here
every summer for years. He comes from London. The country sparrows
round about here are always laughing at him. They say he chirps with
such a Cockney accent. He is a most amusing bird—very brave but very
cheeky. He loves nothing better than an argument, but he always ends it
by getting rude. He is a real city bird. In London he lives around St.
Paul’s Cathedral. ‘Cheapside,’ we call him.”
“Are all these birds from the country round here?” I asked.
“Most of them,” said the Doctor. “But a few rare ones visit me every
year who ordinarily never come near England at all. For instance,
that handsome little fellow hovering over the snapdragon there, he’s
a Ruby-throated Humming-bird. Comes from America. Strictly speaking,
he has no business in this climate at all. It is too cool. I make him
sleep in the kitchen at night. Then every August, about the last week
of the month, I have a Purple Bird-of-Paradise come all the way from
Brazil to see me. She is a very great swell. Hasn’t arrived yet of
course. And there are a few others, foreign birds from the tropics
mostly, who drop in on me in the course of the summer months. But come,
I must show you the zoo.”
_THE TENTH CHAPTER_