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Miss Whybrow used to judge our gardens and award a prize to the best. Like another and more famous Order of Merit it had no merit about it. But at that time I had not become hardened to an experience which for me had all the freshness and vitality of complete novelty.
I had two ‘friends’; a hard-bitten little Yorkshire farmer's son, Heaton Rhodes, and John Dudley Hamilton. It was understood that we were friends; it was like A and B. It was so – so help me God – and there you were, for life. Rhodes had a beautiful garden, spick and span; it was unbeatable and everyone knew he had won. Conversely, John Dudley of the Red Hair had obviously lost – that is, he would have done had anyone bothered to consider a scarecrow's nest of such monumental non-horticulturality. Mrs Hamilton, with whom I had fallen in love, on being shown her son's achievement, burst into peals of the most fascinating and lovely laughter. In no way disturbed, John Dudley uprooted his geranium – I think of it as the only one – and threw it, not so much at her as out of the ‘garden’.
Then came the judging. Miss Whybrow went round with acute observation, becoming more and more portentous. Finally, as one whose expertise and mastery of the arcane arts had been learned in communion with God in the Garden of Eden, she proclaimed, as if announcing the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, the winner. Yes! It was none other than J. D. Hamilton! J. D. looked as if he expected trouble. Mrs Hamilton flushed rather painfully at her son's triumph. B. H. Rhodes, who had a hot temper, waited. He told us afterwards that Miss Whybrow had seen Mrs Hamilton's car and was “sucking up” to get a ride. This certainly seemed a possibility. The Hamiltons were the only parents who owned a car – a Leon Bollet.