enings he
would sit out on the lawn, with a folio balanced on his knee, and do
violence to Mr. Swiggs's ears with such learned terms as
"Boraginiae," "Cucurbitaceae," "Leguminosae," and as winter drew in,
master and man would hold long consultations indoors over certain
plants, the portraits of which in the herbals seemed familiar enough,
though their habitats often proved, on further reading, to lie no
nearer than Arabia Felix or the Spice Islands. Nevertheless, they
took some practical steps. To begin with, the soil of the garden
before the Blue Pavilion was entirely changed--Captain Barker
importing from The Hague no less than thirty tons of the mould most
approved by the Dutch tulip-growers. A tank, too, was sunk at the
back of the building towards the marsh, as a receptacle and reservoir
for rain-water; and by Tristram's fourth birthday his adoptive father
began to build, on the south side of the house, a hibernatory, or
greenhouse, differing in size only from that which Solomon de Caus
had the honour to erect for the Elector Palatine in his gardens at
Heidelberg.

Meanwhile Captain Runacles, who watched these operations from
the other side of the privet hedge and picked up many scraps of
rumour from the antique Simeon, was consumed with scorn and envy.
The two friends no longer spoke. At the back of the Fish and Anchor,
across the road, there stretched at this time the largest and fairest
bowling-green in the east of England--two good acres of smooth turf,
stretching almost to the edge of the sea-cliff, on which side the
wall was cut down to within a foot of the ground, so that the gossips
as they played, or sat and smoked on the benches about the green,
might have a clear view of the ships entering or leaving the harbour,
or of others that, hull-down on the horizon, took the sunset on their
sails. Hither it had always been the custom of the two captains to
repair at the closing in of the day, and drink their beer together as
they watched this or that vessel more or less narrowly avoiding the
shoals below. Nor would they commonly retire, unless the weather was
dirty, until the sea-coal fire was lit above the town-gate and the
lesser lighthouse upon the town-green answered with its six candles.
Now, however, though they met here as usual, no salutation was
exchanged. On benches as far apart as possible they drank their beer
in silence and watched the players. The situation was understood by
everybody at