k. I am not writing a book on
roses. When the war is over perhaps I shall devote my old age to
telling you what I feel and know and think about them....

I had a battle with Timbs. Timbs was about sixty. He had shaggy, bushy
eyebrows over hard little eyes, a shaggy grey beard, and a long,
clean-shaven, obstinate upper lip. Stick him in an ill-fitting frock
coat and an antiquated silk hat, and he would be the stage model of a
Scottish Elder. As a matter of fact he was Hampshire born and a devout
Roman Catholic. But he was as crabbed an old wretch as you can please.
He flatly refused to execute my order. I dismissed him on the spot. He
countered with the statement that he was an old man who had served me
faithfully for many years. I bade him go on serving me faithfully and
not be a damned fool. The roses were to be cut. If he didn't cut them,
Marigold would.

"He's been a-cutting them already," he growled. "Before I came."

Timbs loathed Marigold--why, I could never discover--and Marigold had
the lowest opinion of Timbs. It was an offence for Marigold to
desecrate the garden by his mere footsteps; to touch a plant or a
flower constituted a damnable outrage. On the other side, Timbs could
not approach my person for the purpose of rendering me any necessary
physical assistance, without incurring Marigold's violent resentment.

"He'll go on cutting them," said I, "unless you start in at once."

He began. I sent off Marigold in search of a wheelbarrow. Then, having
Timbs to myself, I summoned him to my side.

"Do you hold with a man sacrificing his life for his country?"

He looked at me for a moment or two, in his dour, crabbed way.

"I've got a couple of sons in France, trying their best to do it," he
replied.

That was the first I had ever heard of it. I had always regarded him as
a gnarled old bachelor without human ties. Where he had kept the sons
and the necessary mother I had not the remotest notion.

"You're proud of them?"

"I am."

"And if one was killed, would you grudge his grave a few roses? For the
sake of him wouldn't you sacrifice a world of roses?"

His manner changed. "I don't understand, sir. Is anybody killed?"

"Didn't I say that all these roses were for Mrs. Connor?"

He dropped his secateur. "Good God, sir! Is it Captain Connor?"

The block-headed idiot of a Marigold had not told him! Marigold is a
very fine fellow, but occasionally he manifests human frailties that
are truly abominab