green moss, clustered the most exquisite blossoms, and the most
delicate trails of stem and leafage wandered and started up lightly,
and at last fell like a veil over rim and handle, and dropped below
the edge of the tiny round table with Siena marble top, on which
Sylvie had placed it between the curtains of the recess that led
through to their conservatory, which had been "a failure this year."

"I would not tell you of it, Amata. I wanted you just to see it,"
she said. And Mrs. Argenter admired and thanked, and then lamented
their own ill-success in greenhouse and garden culture.

"I am not strong enough to look after it much myself, and Mr.
Argenter never has time," she said; "and our first man was a
tipsifier, and the last was a rogue. He sold off quantities of the
best young plants, we found, just before they came to show for
anything."

"Our man has been with us for eight years," said Rodney Sherrett. "I
dare say he could recommend some one to you, if you liked; and he
wouldn't send anybody that wasn't right. Shall I ask him?"

Mrs. Argenter would be delighted if he would; and then Mr. Sherrett
must come into the conservatory, where a few ragged palm ferns,
their great leaves browning and crumbling at the edges,--some
daphnes struggling into green tips, having lost their last growth of
leaf and dropped all their flower buds, and several calmly enduring
orange and lemon trees, gave all the suggestion of foliage that the
place afforded, and served, much like the painter's inscription at
the bottom of his canvas merely to signify by the scant glimpse
through the drawing-room draperies,--"This is a conservatory."