than waist high, were planted in walks and mazes and were trimmed into elegant little oblongs, spheres and cones. Sunlight poured over these gardens and one could see at a glance their complex but regular designs. Here, however, just outside the back door, a shaggy mass of shapeless shrubbery rose up as high as the house and seemed to fill the entire back yard without any plan or design.

"Just look at it," said Peter irritably. "Have you ever seen such a mess?" There was, however, between two of the shrubs, a narrow opening beyond which one could see a bit of sunny lawn, and as Peter pushed his way through the overhanging branches, the boy followed him onto a grassy oval space in the heart of the high hedges. Here was the part that Peter had restored, a neatly trimmed lawn bordered by flower beds and set off by a grouping of white painted antique cast iron garden furniture. The elegant trimness of the sunny lawn and the freshly painted furniture was in striking contrast to the shady squalor of the ancient boxwood hedges and enhanced their air of romantic abandon.

Bobby was delighted by the garden, and for the first time since he and Peter had approached the town he began to feel a little at peace with himself. But when he looked at Peter he saw that Peter was even more agitated than ever.

"Time and again," he was saying, "I have tried to persuade her to sell it and move out to the suburbs where all her friends live now. The house is too big for her, it's expensive to heat and hard to keep up, and the neighborhood is going to the dogs. But she won't hear of it. 'Why son,' she says, 'this garden was planted by your great-great-great-granddaddy, almost two hundred years ago. Why, every year the Garden Tour comes to see it.'

As Peter's voice died away, his mother's voice rang out through the boxwood hedges "Son, son, did you bring the umbrella out?"-and Peter's face suddenly flushed.

"No, mother, I did not," he shouted back.

"I declare," she said, "you never think of a thing. Now you know we don't sit out here in the sun without the umbrella. Now you come in and get it."

Peter's wrath had now passed the point of speech, and he looked at the boy with blazing eyes. Then he turned on his heel and without another word he left the boxwood garden. From outside the hedges Bobby heard the sound of voices. raised in anger, then lowered, then raised again, without being able to distinguish the words. Then silence, and after a moment Peter's mother entered the garden, ducking to miss the untrimmed branches and bearing a tray of cokefilled glasses and cookies.

"I had to send Peter back to the house for the umbrella," she said. "It's too hot out here without it." Her face was pulled into a placid little smile, just as if nothing had happened, and she proceeded across the lawn to the table. The boy followed a few steps behind her. He was frightened by her quarrel with her son, and he tried to think of something to say which would keep up a conversation without letting it get into dangerous areas.

"It's a very nice garden, Mrs. Bowen," he ventured.

"Do you like it?" she said, setting down the tray. "I try to keep it up, but it's a job. About all I can do is keep the lawn nice and the flower beds. I wanted Peter to trim the boxwood so it would be nice like in his gardens in Atlanta, but he says it's too old. He says its beyond all hope. Of course that's just Peter's talk. Peter has always loved the boxwood garden. When he was a little boy he used to play out here all day long with no one but me to keep him company, and when he got older I had the hardest time getting him to go out and play with the other little boys. I practically had to chase him out with a stick. Are you a landscape architect too?"

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