glance at your copy of Who’s Who and turn up the M’s, you will find in the space allotted to the Earl the words “Hobby—Gardening.” To which, in a burst of modest pride, his lordship has added “Awarded first prize for Hybrid Teas, Temple Flower Show, 1911.” The words tell their own story.
Lord Marshmoreton was the most enthusiastic amateur gardener in a land of enthusiastic amateur gardeners. He lived for his garden. The love which other men expend on their nearest and dearest, Lord Marshmoreton lavished on seeds, roses and loamy soil. The hatred which some of his order feel for socialists and demagogues, Lord Marshmoreton kept for rose slugs, rose beetles, and the small, yellowish-white insect which is so depraved and sinister a character that it goes through life with an alias, being sometimes called a rose hopper and sometimes a thrip. A simple soul, Lord Marshmoreton, mild and pleasant. Yet put him among the thrips and he became a dealer-out of death and slaughter, a destroyer of the class of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan. Thrips feed on the underside of rose leaves, sucking their juice and causing them to turn yellow; and Lord Marshmoreton’s views on these things were so rigid that he would have poured whale-oil solution on his grandmother if he had found her on the underside of one of his rose leaves sucking the juice.
The only time in the day when he ceased to be the horny-handed toiler and became the aristocrat was in the evening after dinner when, egged on by Lady Caroline who gave him no rest in the matter, he would retire to his private study and work on his history of the family, assisted by his able secretary,
