Sebastian... said, 'I must go to the Botanical Gardens.'
'Why?'
'To see the ivy.'
It seemed a good enough reason and I went with him. He took my arm as we walked under the walls of Merton.
'I've never been to the Botanical Gardens,' I said.
'Oh, Charles, what a lot you have to learn! There's a beautiful arch there and more different kinds of ivy than I knew existed. I don't know where I should be without the Botanical Gardens.'
When at length I returned to my rooms and found them exactly as I had left them that morning, I detected a jejune air that had not irked me before. What was wrong? Nothing except the golden daffodils seemed to be real.
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
