3 April 1928, Diary of John Bailey:
Bruce Richmond has just told me a lovely story about Walter de la Mare. He is at last getting well fast after his long illness, but he was for three weeks at the very gates of death. On one of these days his younger daughter said to him as she left him, 'Is there nothing I could get for you, fruit or flowers?' On which in a weak voice he could just — so characteristically —answer:
'No, no, my dear; too late for fruit, too soon for flowers!'
From Bailey, Letters and Diaries, p. 294.