"Have you," said Francesca, "seen our sunflowers lately?"
"Yes," I said, "I've kept an eye on them occasionally. It's a bit
difficult, by the way, not to see them, isn't it?"
"Well," she said, "perhaps they are rather striking."
"Striking!" I said. "I never heard a more inadequate word. I call them
simply overwhelming--the steam-rollers of the vegetable world. Look at
their great yellow open faces."
"I never," said Francesca, "saw a steam-roller with a face. You're
mixing your metaphors."
"And," I said, "I shall go on mixing them as long as you grow
sunflowers. It's the very least a man can do by way of protest."
"I don't know why you should want to protest. The seed makes very good
chicken-food."
"Yes, I know," I said, "that's what you always said."
"And I bet," she said, "you've repeated it. When you've met the tame
Generals and Colonels at your club, and they've boasted to you about
their potatoes, I know you've countered them with the story of how
you've turned the whole of your lawn into a bed of sunflowers calculated
to drive the most obstinate hen into laying two eggs a day, rain or
shine."
"I admit," I said, "that I may have mentioned the matter casually, but I
never thought the things were going to be like this. When I first knew
them and talked about them they were tender little shoots of green just
modestly showing above the ground, and now they're a forest primeval.
The murmuring pines and the hemlock aren't in it with this impenetrable
jungle liberally blotched with yellow, this so-called sunflower patch."
"What would you call it," she said, "if you didn't call it sunflower?"
"I should call it a beast of prey," I said. "A sunflower seems to me to
be more like a tiger than anything else."
"It was a steam-roller about a minute ago."
"Yes," I said, "it was--a tigerish steam-roller."
"How interesting," she said. "I have not met one quite like that."
"That," I said, "is because your eye isn't properly poetical. It's
blocked with chicken-food and other utilitarian objects."
"I must," she said, "consult an oculist. Perhaps he will give me glasses
which will unblock my eye and make me see tigers in the garden."
"No," I said, "you will have to do it for yourself. For such an eye as
yours even the best oculists are unavailing."
"I might," she said, "improve if I read poetry at home. Has any poet
written about sunflowers?"
"Yes," I said, "BLAKE did. He was quite mad, and he wrote a poem to a
sunflower: 'Ah! Sunflower! Weary of time.' That's how it begins."
"Weary of time!" she said scornfully. "That's no good to me. I'm weary
of having no time at all to myself."
"That shows," I said, "that you're not a sunflower."
"Thank heaven for that," she said. "It's enough to have four children to
look after--five including yourself."
"My dear Francesca," I said, "how charming you are to count me as a
child! I shall really begin to feel as if there were golden threads
among the silver."
"Tut-tut," she said, "you're not so grey as all that."
"Yes, I am," I said, "quite as grey as all that and much greyer; only we
don't talk about it."
"But we _do_ talk about sunflowers," she said, "don't we?"
"If you'll promise to have the beastly glaring things dug up--"
"Not," she said, "before we've extracted from them their last pip of
chicken-food."
"Well, anyhow," I said, "as soon as possible. If you'll promise to do
that I'll promise never to mention them again."
"But you'll lose your reputation with the Generals and Colonels."
"I don't mind that," I said, "if I can only rid the garden of their
detested presence."
"My golden-threaded boy," said Francesca, "it shall be as you desire."