Читать книгу Kisington Town - Brown Abbie Farwell - Страница 8

There never were seen such beautiful gardens as bloomed in Kisington-by-the-Sea. Not only every chateau and villa had its parterres spread with blooming rugs of all colors; but each white-washed cottage, every thatched hut, boasted its garden-plot of dainty posies. Each had some quaint device or some special beauty which distinguished it from the others. For there was great horticultural rivalry in Kisington-by-the-Sea.

Now this was all because Hugh, the Lord Mayor, who was very fond of flowers, had offered a prize for the prettiest garden in the town. The Lord Mayor himself lived on a hill in the center of the town, in the midst of the most beautiful garden of all. It flowed down the hillside from the summit in ripples of radiant color, – roses and lilies, pinks and daffodils, larkspur and snapdragon. All the flowers of the land were there, and many foreigners beside.

Through the garden wound the yellow driveway by which the Lord Mayor passed in his golden coach. He loved to drive slowly down this road, sniffing the fragrance of his flowers; and then out through the streets of the town, observing the beautiful gardens on every hand, – the result of his own love for flowers.

When the Lord Mayor saw all the fair maidens down on their knees in the flower-beds, watering the buds with their little green water-pots, nipping off dead leaves, pulling up scrawny weeds, coaxing the delicate creepers to climb, he would rub his hands and say: -

"Ah, this is good! This is very good indeed! We shall have the most beautiful town in the world, blossoming with flowers, and the most beautiful maids in the world, blossoming with health and sweetness like the flowers they tend. It will be hard to tell which is the fairer, the maidens or the flowers. Hey! Is it not so, my son?"

Then he would chuckle and poke in the ribs the young man who rode beside him.

The Lord Mayor's son was very good to look upon; tall and fair, with curly golden locks and eyes as brown as the heart of a yellow daisy. When he drove through the town with the Lord Mayor, the maidens down on their knees in their garden-plots would pause a moment from their chase of a wriggling worm or a sluggish slug to look after the golden coach and sigh gently. Then they would turn back to their Bowers more eagerly than before. For there was the prize!

You see, the Lord Mayor's son was himself part of the prize to be won. The Lord Mayor had vowed that Cedric, his son, should marry the girl who could show by late summer the most beautiful garden in Kisington-by-the-Sea. Moreover, he promised to build a fine palace to overlook this prize garden, and there the young couple should live happy ever after, like any Prince and Princess. And this was why the maids worked so hard in the gardens of Kisington-by-the-Sea, and why the flowers blossomed there as no flowers ever blossomed before.

Now one day the Lord Mayor drove through the village in his golden coach and came out upon the downs near the seashore. And there, quite by itself, he found a little cottage which he had never before seen: a tiny cottage which had no sign of a garden anywhere about it, – only a few flowers growing in cracked pots on the window-sills, and on the bench just outside the door.

"What!" cried the Lord Mayor, stopping the coach. "What does this mean? There should be a garden here. I must look to the reason for this contempt of my offer." And he jumped down from the coach and rapped sharply upon the door.

Presently the door opened, and there stood a girl, all in rags, but so beautiful that the Lord Mayor's son, who was sitting languidly in the golden coach, shut his eyes as one does when a great light shines suddenly in one's face.

"Hey!" cried the Lord Mayor, frowning. "Why have you no garden, girl? Have you no pride? Do you not dream to win the prize which I offer?"

"I am a stranger," said the maiden timidly. "No one has told me of a prize. What may it be, my Lord?"

"It is a prize worth trying for," said the Lord Mayor. "The hand of my son there, and the finest palace in the land for the mistress of the prize garden. Does that thought please you, girl? If not, you are different from all the other maidens."

The girl lifted her eyes to the golden coach and met the gaze of Cedric fixed upon her. "I love flowers," she said. "I had once a little garden in my old home. But now I am too poor to buy plants and bulbs and seedlings. How, then, shall I make a garden to please Your Lordship?"