are discontinued, neither could very well say why, but the presence of
Gervase chills and oppresses both of them and keeps them apart. She has
the burden of memory, he the burden of suspicion; and suspicion is a
thing so hateful and intolerable to the nature of Brandolin that it
makes him miserable to feel himself guilty of it.

But one morning the Babe coaxes her out to go with him to his garden,--a
floral republic, where a cabbage comes up cheek by jowl with a gloxinia,
and plants are plucked up by the roots to see if they are growing
aright. The Babe's system of horticulture is to dig intently for ten
minutes in all directions, to make himself very red in the face, and
then to call Dick, Tom, or Harry, any under-gardener who may be near,
and say, "Here, do it, will you?" Nevertheless, he retains the belief
that he is the creator and cultivator of this his garden, as M. Grevy
believes that he is the chief person in the French Republic; and he
takes Madame Sabaroff to admire it.

"It would look better if it were a little more in order," she permits
herself to observe.

"Oh, that's their fault," says the Babe, just as M. Grevy would say of
disorder in the Chambers, the Babe meaning Dick, Tom, or Harry, as the
President would mean Clemenceau, Rochefort, or M. de Mun.

"My dear Babe, how exactly you are like the Head of a Department!" says
Brandolin, who has followed them out of the house and comes up behind
them. "According to the Head of a Department, it is never the head that
is at fault, always the understrappers. May I inquire since when it has
become the fashion to set sunflowers with their heads downward?"

"I wanted to see if the roots would turn after the sun," says the Babe,
and regards his explanation as triumphant.

"And they only die! How perverse of them! You would become a second
Newton, if your destiny were not already cast, to dazzle the world by a
blending of Beau Brummel and Sir Joseph Paxton."

The Babe looks a little cross; he does not like to be laughed at before
his princess. He has got his opportunity, but it vexes him; he has an
impression that his companions will soon drift into forgetting both him
and his garden. Since the approach of Brandolin the latter has said
nothing.

The children's gardens are in a rather wild and distant part of the
grounds of Surrenden. It is noon; most people staying in the house are
still in their own rooms; it is solitary, sunny, still; a thrush is
singing