I suggested that, sown at that period of the summer, they would not flower this season.

He said they would.

(They did.) None of my suggestions met with favour, so I became gratefully passive, and watched the lucky fingers from a distance, fluttering small papers, and making mystic deposits here and there, through the length and breadth of the garden.

I only begged him to avoid my labels.

The seeds he sowed ranged from three (rather old) seeds of bottle gourd to a packet of mixed Virginian stock.