To my astonishment
and joy there was vegetation in it. There was a dwarf evergreen bush and
a fragment of vine stretching itself sleepily, and a tall thin tree--they
might all have got comfortably into one bed, but they had been planted in
three far apart, and this gave the garden a desolate Ramsgate-in-winter
air of "Beds to let." The tall thin tree was absolutely naked, without an
inch of foliage to cover its wooden limbs; a mere mass of dry sticks. I
looked hard at the tree to see where it offended, determined to pluck it
out. But it returned my gaze with the stolidity of conscious
innocence--it held up its wooden arms in deprecation. I re-read Mr. P.
Leonardo Macready's letter. "Which now overhang the public footpath"! Ah!
that was what was the matter with my trees. It was raining, but I am an
Englishman and the law is sacred, and I went outside into the public
highway and looked at the tall thin tree from the new point of view. Sure
enough--very far up--there _was_ a bough overhanging the public footpath.
I looked up at it and shook my fist menacingly, but it waved its twigs in
response with an irritating amiability. I began to understand what an
annoyance it must be to have a bough up there that you couldn't flick at
with your stick as you passed by, and that even when weighed down by its
summer greenery would bemock you if you made a casual clutch at its
foliage, and laugh at you in its leaves.
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