on your knees before anybody will
cart it away."

"I _did_ hear some word of it down in Toy's shop, now I come to think,"
said Cai. "But if the land's worthless--"

"It's worth little enough to any one but me and Mr Middlecoat. You see,
it marches right alongside our two farms, between them and the Railway
Company's strip along the waterside, and--well, Rilla's freehold and
Middlecoat's is freehold, and it's nature, I suppose, to be jealous of
any third party interlopin'. But I don't want the land, and so I've
told him; nor I won't bid against him and run up the price,--though
that's what they're aimin' at by an auction."

"Then what in thunder does the fellow want?" demanded 'Bias.

"If you'll climb 'pon the hedge yonder--that's my boundary--you'll see a
little strip of a field, not fifty yards wide, runnin' down this side of
the plantation. It widens a bit, higher up the hill, but 'tis scarcely
more than a couple acres, even so. Barton's Orchard, they call it."

"But what about it?" asked Cai, craning his neck over to examine the
plot.

"Why, to be sure I want to take it in for my roses. It lies rather too
near the trees, to be sure; but one could trench along the far side and
fill the trench with concrete, to check their roots from spreadin' this
way; and all the soil is good along this side of the valley."

"Then why not buy it, ma'am, since 'tis for sale? Though for my part,"
added Cai, looking round upon the beds which, just now, were unsightly
enough, with stiff leafless shoots protruding above their winter mulch,
"I can't think what you want with more roses than you have already."

"One can never have too many roses," declared Mrs Bosenna. "Let be that
there's new ones comin' out every year, faster than you can keep count
with them. Folks'll never persuade me that the old H.P.'s don't do best
for Cornwall; but when you go in for exhibition there's the judges and
their fads to be considered, and the rage nowadays is all for Teas and
high centres. . . . When first I heard as that parcel of ground was
likely to come in the market, I sat down and planned how I'd lay it out
with three long beds for the very best Teas, and fence off the top with
a rose hedge--Wichurianas or Penzance sweet briars--and call it my
Jubilee Garden; next year bein' the Diamond Jubilee, you know. All the
plants could be in before the end of February, and I'll promise myself
that by June, when the Queen's day came round, th