Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/24

8 Garden girls thought the garden was their chief earthly good; certainly it was their chief joy. With it and one another little else was needed for companionship.

Now, in May, the lilacs blossomed and the irises were beginning, the herald shrubs were announcing themselves vanguards of the flower-beds. Many of these were filled with perennials, growing taller, more luxuriant each year, thanks to the care they got, chief of them all the tall hollyhocks which illumined the garden on all sides. The hollyhocks were so many and so magnificent that they gave their name to the Garden house. It was known as Hollyhock House to all the countryside. Other beds were left for seeds of swift-growing annuals; each Garden girl had two of these beds for her own planting and, when they flowered, one could have accurately named their owners. Even meteoric Florimel did not neglect her flowers.

Jane was singing in the sunshine as she cut sprays of white lilac. She looked like a sunray clad in flesh, with the sunshine on her magnificent hair, and her slender body pulsating with song, as a ray of light quivers in the air.

Mary looked up from her aster seedlings which she was thinning.