The Lighter Side of English Life. Frank Frankfort Moore

having called upon the newcomer is not invariably regarded as conferring upon the latter the privilege of a passport to the most representative Society at Thurswell. The strangers must wait until Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer have decided whether they are to be called on or ignored. Mrs. Lingard is the widow of a captain of Sappers, and Miss Mercer is the middle-aged daughter of a previous rector, and for years these ladies have assumed the right of veto in respect of the question of calling upon newcomers. Within the past year, however, this question, it should be mentioned, has developed certain complications, owing to the strained relations existing between the two ladies. Previously they formed a sort of vigilance committee to determine what should be done, but since the breaking off of diplomatic relations between them the poor people who had previously looked to them jointly for guidance are now compelled to consult them severally as to the course they mean to pursue, and all this takes time, and the loss of time in the etiquette of first calls may be construed into actual rudeness by sensitive people.

      That is how we stand at present; and although many well-meaning persons—not invariably belonging to clerical circles—have endeavoured to bring about a rapprochement for the good of the whole community between Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer, hitherto every effort of the kind has failed.

      When the particulars of the incident that brought about the friction between the two ladies are known, it will easily be understood that a restoration of the status quo ante is not to be accomplished in a moment.

      It was all due to the exceptionally dry summer. People who retain only the pleasantest recollections of that season of sunlight and balmy breezes will probably find reason to modify their views respecting it when they hear how it led to the shattering of an old friendship and, incidentally, to the complication of the most important social question that can come before such a community as is represented by Thurs-well.

II.—THE SHATTERING OF THE PILLARS

       Table of Contents

      The facts of the matter are simple enough in their way. Each of the ladies occupies a small house of her own, fully, and not semi-detached, with a small patch of green in front and a small garden at the back; but the combined needs of front and back are not considered sufficiently great to take up all the time of a gardener working six days in the week during the summer. There is enough work, however, to take up three days of the six, with window-cleaning thrown in, in slack seasons. As the conditions of labour are identical in the case of the gardens of both ladies—only Miss Mercer throws in the washing of her pug to balance Mrs. Lingard's window-cleaning—John Bingham, the jobbing gardener of Thurswell, suggested several years ago that he should divide his time between the two gardens, and this plan, to all appearances, worked very satisfactorily in regard to every one concerned.

      

      Only John Bingham was aware of the trouble involved in keeping both gardens on precisely the same level of “getting on”—only John Bingham was aware of the difficulty of preventing either of the ladies from seeing that anything in the garden of the other was “getting on” better than the same thing in her own patch. It might have been fancied that as they were in complete agreement respecting the necessity for a strict censorship upon the visiting lists of the neighbourhood as regards strangers, there could not possibly exist any rivalry between them on so insignificant a matter as the growth of a petunia or the campanile of a campanula; but John Bingham knew better. It had been his task year by year to minimise to the one lady his success with the garden of the other—to say a word of disparagement on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of all that he had been praising on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. But sometimes Nature is stronger even than her greatest enemy, a jobbing gardener, and so it was that when Mrs. Lingard chanced to pay a visit to Miss Mercer on a Thursday, she found the garden of the latter, just recovering from the hand of John Bingham's attention on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, obviously superior in some respects to her own, and John found his diplomatic resources quite unable to meet with the demand for an explanation when she got home. It was in vain that he tried to make her understand, what she certainly should have known already from her experience of the ministrations of John—namely, that not he, but the superior soil and aspect of Miss Mercer's herbaceous border, should be regarded accountable for the marvellous growths which had attracted her attention in the garden of her rival. His Thursday, Friday, and Saturday patron declared herself far from satisfied with such an explanation. Soil! Had she ever shown herself to be close-fisted in the matter of soil? she inquired. And as for aspect—had he not chosen the aspect of the herbaceous border at which he was now working? No, she knew very well, she affirmed, that what made a garden beautiful was loving care. She professed herself unable to understand why John should lavish all his affection upon Miss Mercer's border rather than upon her own; all that she could do was to judge by results, and, viewed from this basis, it could not but be apparent to every unprejudiced observer that he had been giving Miss Mercer's borders such loving touches as he had never bestowed upon her own: the flowers spoke for themselves.

      John had heard of the Language of Flowers, but he had never mastered the elements of their speech. As a matter of fact, he took no interest in flowers or their habits. He had “dratted” them times without number for their failure to do all that the illustrated catalogues declared they would do, and now he found reason to drat those of Miss Mercer for having done much more than he had meant them to do. It was with a view to restore the balance of mediocrity between the gardens, which had been through no fault of his, disturbed by a sudden outbreak of “Blushing Brides” in Miss Mercer's parterre, that he gave some extra waterings to Mrs. Lingard's verbinas, trusting to convince her that he was a thoroughly disinterested operator in both the gardens—which was certainly a fact. But in that arid summer the response of the verbinas was but too rapid, and Miss Mercer, calling upon her friend (and rival), was shown the bed with the same pride that she had displayed when exhibiting her petunias.

      She said nothing—the day was Saturday—but she perceived, with that unerring intuition which in some persons almost takes the place of genius, that petunias had been supplanted (literally) by verbinas in the affections of John Bingham.

      She spent the Sunday rehearsing an interview which she had arranged in her mind to have with John Bingham when he should arrive the next day.

      But Monday came, and John Bingham failed to arrive. She waited at the back entrance to the garden until ten o'clock, but still he did not appear. Then she sent a messenger to his cottage to inquire the cause of his absence. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were her days for his services, and never once had he failed her. She could not guess what was the matter. She had always regarded him as a sober man and one for whom Monday morning had no terrors. The mystery of his first failure was rendered all the more unfathomable when the tweeny maid returned saying that Mrs. Bingham had told her positive that John had gone out to work as usual that same morning, and that Mrs. Bingham had taken it for granted that he was in Miss Mercer's garden.

      For a quarter of an hour Miss Mercer pondered over the whole incident, and then she suddenly put on another hat, discarding the garden specimen with which she had begun the day, and went down the road and round by the Moated Manor House to where Mrs. Lingard's villa was situated, just beyond the knoll of elms. The hall door was wide open to the morning air, and through the glass door at the farther end of the hall she distinctly saw Mrs. Lingard standing on the edge of one of the beds of the garden with John Bingham kneeling at her feet.

      And this on a Monday morning!

      John Bingham had actually attended morning ser-vice in the church the day before—Miss Mercer had seen him there—and yet on Monday he had broken faith with her, and now, at ten-thirty, he was engaged in planting out the contents of the capacious basket which Mrs. Lingard was doling out to him.

      And