(1)The professor’s house, big and untidy, stood alone at one end of a huge garden. The place was totally uncared for, quite   1  and overgrown with all sorts of useless things. I  2  my way through bushes and tall weeds to the front door and rang the bell.

I was glad that I had found him. In twenty minutes he 3  me right on all the   4  that had puzzled me. I was on the   5 of leaving when I looked out of his study window and said, “You’re very fond of gardening, I see.”

 “No,I’m not,” he said. “ 6  , I love this garden, though. It’s   7 I always wanted it to be. I never touch it at

“It could be made lovely. It   8 a pity to let all this ground to go to waste. But perhaps you don’t  9  that way?” said I.

“I don’t. I lived here when I was a child, and I had  10  of gardening then. It was my father’s hobby,you see. Unfortunately,he wasn’t   11   enough to do it himself. My brother and I did all of it between us year after year. There