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 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS. W.C. ; 
 
 43, queen victoria street, e.c.; 
 
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 BRIGHTON : 135, north street. 
 
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UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 10003058076 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/marysmeadowletteewin 
 
MARY'S MEADOW 
 
"It was a glorious night. The moon was rising round and large out of the mist, and 
 dark against its brightness I could see the figure of the Old Squire pacing the pathway over 
 Mary's Meadow." — Page 14. 
 
 Front. 
 
MARY'S MEADOW 
 
 Letters from a Little Garden. 
 
 JULIANA HORATIA EWING, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "'JACKANAPES," " DADDY DARWIN'S DOVECOT," " THE STORV OF A SHORT LIFE 
 "LOB LIE BY-THE-FIRE ; OR, THE LUCK OF LINGBOROUGH," ETC., ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY GORDON BROWNE, 
 
 ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY EDMUND EVANS. 
 
 «taKy 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SOCIETY FOR" PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 ; NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS, W.C. ; 
 
 43, queen victoria street, e.c. ; 
 
 26, st. George's place, hyde park corner, s.w. 
 
 BRIGHTON : t 33 , north street. 
 
 New York: E. & J.. B. YOUNG & CO. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ."Mary's Meadow" first appeared in the numbers of Aunt Judy's. Magazine from 
 November 1883, to March 1884. It was the last serial story which Mrs. Ewing 
 wrote, and I believe the subject of it arose from the fact that in 1883, after having 
 spent several years in moving from place to place, she went to live at Villa 
 Ponente, Taunton, where she had. a settled home with a garden, and was able to 
 revert to the practical cultivation of flowers, which had been one of the favourite 
 pursuits of her girlhood. 
 
 The Game of the Earthly Paradise was received with great delight by the readers 
 \>f the story; one family of children adopted the word " Mary-meadowing" to 
 describe the work which they did towards beautifying hedges and bare places ; and 
 my sister received many letters of •enquiry about the various plants mentioned in her 
 tale. These she answered in the Correspondence columns of the Magazine, and hi 
 July 1884, it was suggested that a "Parkinson Society" should be formed, whose 
 objects were "to search out and cultivate old garden flowers which have become 
 scarce ; to exchange ^eeds and plants ; to plant waste places with hardy flowers ; to 
 circulate books on gardening amongst the Members ; " and further, "to try to prevent 
 the extermination of rare wild flowers, as well as of garden treasures." 
 
 Reports of the Society, with correspondence on the exchanges of plants and 
 books, and quaint local names of flowers, were given in the Magazine until it was 
 brought to a close after Mrs. Ewing's death ; but I am glad to say that the Society 
 itself is still in existence, and any one who wishes to procure a copy of its Rules can 
 do so by sending a stamped envelope to the Secretary, Miss Alice Sargant, 7, Belsize 
 Grove, ' N. W. Miss Sargant was the originator of the scheme, so its management 
 remains in the best possible hands, and Professor Oliver, ■ of Kew Gardens, has 
 consented to become President in Mrs. Ewing's place. She owed to him her first 
 introduction to Paradisi in sole Paradisus terreslris, as well as many other kind acts 
 of help on flower subjects. 
 
 The " Letters from a Little Garden " were published in Atint Judy's Magazine 
 between November 1884, and February 1885, and as they, as well as "Mary's 
 Meadow," were due to the interest which my .sister was taking in the tending of 
 her own Earthly Paradise, — they are inserted in this volume, although they were 
 left unfinished when the writer was called away to be — 
 
 "Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither ! " 
 
 HORATIA K. F. GATTY. 
 May, 1886. 
 
Note. — If any readers of "Mary's Meadow" have been as completely puzzled 
 as the writer was by the title of John Parkinson's old book, it may interest them to 
 know that the question has been raised and answered in Notes and Queries. 
 
 I first saw the Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris at KeW, some years ago, and 
 was much bewitched by its quaint charm. I grieve to say that I do not possess it ; 
 but an old friend and florist — the Rev. JH. T. Ellacombe — was good enough to lend 
 me his copy for reference, and to him I wrote for the meaning of the title. But his 
 scholarship, and that of other -learned friends, was quite at fault. My old friend's 
 youthful energies (he will permit me to say that he is ninety-four) were not satisfied to 
 rust in ignorance, and he wrote to Notes and Queries on the subject, and has been 
 twice answered. It is an absurd play upon words, after the fashion of John Parkin- 
 son's day. Paradise, as Aunt Judy's readers may know, is originally an Eastern 
 word, meaning a park, or pleasure ground. I am ashamed to say that the knowledge 
 of this fact did not help me to the pun. Paradisi in sole Paradiszis terrestris means 
 Park — in— son's Earthly Paradise ! 
 
 J. H. E., February, 1884. 
 
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean 
 Are Thy returns ! ev'n as the flowers in spring ; 
 
 To which, besides their own demean, 
 The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. 
 Grief melts away 
 Like snow in May, 
 As if there were no such cold thing. 
 
 Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart 
 Could have recover'd greenness ? It was gone 
 
 Quite under ground ; as flowers depart 
 To see their mother-root, when they have blown 
 Where they together 
 All the hard weather, 
 Dead to the world, keep house unknown. 
 
 O that I once past changing were, 
 Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither ! 
 
 Many a spring I shoot up fair, 
 Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither ; 
 Nor doth my flower 
 Want a spring-shower, 
 My sins and I joining together. 
 
 These are Thy wonders, Lord of love, 
 To make us see we are but flowers that glide : 
 
 Which when we once can find and prove, 
 Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide. 
 Who would be more, , 
 
 Swelling through store, 
 Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. 
 
 George Herim 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 OTHER is always trying 
 to make us love our 
 neighbours as ourselves. 
 She does so despise 
 us for greediness, or 
 '/grudging, or snatching, 
 or not sharing what we 
 have got, or taking the 
 best and leaving the 
 rest, or helping our- 
 selves first, or pushing 
 forward, or praising 
 Number One, or being 
 Dogs in the Manger, or 
 anything selfish. And 
 we cannot bear her to 
 despise us ! 
 
 We despise being selfish, too ; but very often we forget. Besides, it 
 is sometimes rather difficult to love your neighbour as yourself when 
 you want a thing very much ; and Arthur says he believes it is par- 
 ticularly difficult if it is your next-door-neighbour, and that that is why 
 Father and the Old Squire quarrelled about the footpath through 
 Mary's Meadow. 
 
 The Old Squire is not really his name, but that is what people call 
 him. He is very rich. His place comes next to ours, and it is much 
 bigger, and he has quantities of fields, and Father has only got a few ; 
 but there are two fields beyond Mary's Meadow which belong to Father, 
 though the Old Squire wanted to buy them. Father would not sell 
 them, and he says he has a right of way through Mary's Meadow to go 
 to his fields, but the Old Squire, says he has nothing of the kind, and 
 that is what they quarrelled about. 
 
 Arthur says if you quarrel, and are too grown-up to punch each 
 other's heads, you go to law; and if going to law doesn't make it up, you 
 appeal. They went to law, I know, for Mother cried about it ; and I 
 suppose it did not make it up, for the Old Squire appealed. 
 
 B 
 
12 THE ZQUIRE AND THE WALNUTS/ 
 
 After that he used to ride about all day on his grey horse, with 
 Saxon, his yellow bull- dog, following him, to see that we did not trespass 
 on Mary's Meadow. I think he thought that if we children were there, 
 Saxon would frighten us, for I do not suppose he knew that we knew 
 him. But Saxon used often to come with the Old Squire's Scotch 
 Gardener to see our gardener, and when they were looking at the wall 
 fruit, Saxon used to come snuffing after us. 
 
 He is the nicest dog I know. He looks very savage, but he is only 
 very funny. His lower jaw sticks out, which makes him grin, and some 
 people think he is gnashing his teeth with rage. We think it looks as if 
 he were laughing— like Mother Hubbard's dog, when she brought home 
 his coffin, and he wasn't dead — but it really is only the shape of his jaw. 
 I loved Saxon the first day I saw him, and he likes me, and licks my 
 face. But what he likes best of all are Bath Oliver Biscuits. 
 
 One day the Scotch Gardener saw me feeding him, and he pulled 
 his red beard, and said, "Ye do weel to mak hay while the sun shines, 
 Saxon, my man. There's sma' sight o' young leddies and sweet cakes 
 at hame for ye ! " And Saxon grinned, and wagged his tail, and the 
 Scotch Gardener touched his hat to me, and took him away. 
 
 The Old Squire's Weeding Woman is our nursery-maid's aunt. She 
 is not very old, but she looks so, because she has lost her teeth, and is 
 bent nearly double. She wears a large hood, and carries a big basket, 
 which she puts down outside the nursery door when she comes to tea 
 with Bessy. If it is a fine afternoon, and we are gardening, she lets us 
 borrow the basket, and then we play at being weeding women in each 
 other's gardens. 
 
 She tells Bessy about the Old Squire. She says — "He do be a real 
 old skinflint, the Old Zquire a be ! " But she thinks it — " zim as if 
 'twas having ne'er a wife nor child for to keep the natur in 'un, so his 
 heart do zim to shrivel, like they walnuts Butler tells us of as a zets 
 down for desart. The Old Zquire he mostly eats ne'er a one now 's 
 teeth be so bad. But a counts them every night when's desart's done. 
 And a keeps 'em till the karnels be mowldy, and a keeps 'em till they 
 be dry, and a keeps 'em till they be dust ; and when the karnels is dust, 
 a cracks aal the lot of 'em when desart's done, zo's no one mayn't have 
 no good of they walnuts, since they be no good to he." 
 
 Arthur can imitate the Weeding Woman exactly, and he can imitate 
 the Scotch Gardener, too. Chris (that is Christopher, our youngest 
 brother), is very fond of "The Zquire and the Walnuts." He gets nuts. 
 
THOU LIGHT-WINGED DRYAD OF THE TREES, 13 
 
 or anything, like shells or bits of flower-pots, that will break, and some- 
 thing to hit with, and when Arthur comes to " The kar?iels is dust" Chris 
 smashes everything before him, shouting, " A cracks aal the lot of 'em," 
 and then he throws the bits all over the place, with " They be no good to he." 
 
 Father laughed very much when he heard Arthur do the Weeding 
 Woman, and Mother could not help laughing, too ; but she did not like 
 it, because she does not like us to repeat servants' gossip. 
 
 The Weeding Woman is a great gossip. She gossips all the time 
 she is having her tea, and it is generally about the Old Squire. She used 
 to tell Bessy that his flowers bloomed themselves to death, and the fruit 
 rotted on the walls, because he would let nothing be picked, and gave 
 nothing away, except now and then a grand present of fruit to Lady 
 Catherine, for which the old lady returned no thanks, but only a rude 
 message to say. that his peaches were over-ripe, and he. had better have 
 sent the grapes to the Infirmary. Adela asked — "Why is the Old Squire 
 so kind to Lady Catherine?" and Father said — "Because we are so fond 
 of Lords and Ladies in this part of the country." I thought he meant 
 the lords and ladies in the hedges, for we are very fond of them. But 
 he didn't. He meant real lords and ladies. 
 
 There are splendid lords and ladies in the hedges of Mary's 
 Meadow. I never can make up my mind when I like them best. In 
 April and May, when they have smooth plum-coloured coats and pale 
 green cowls, and push up out of last year's dry leaves, or in August 
 and September, when their hoods have fallen away, and their red berries 
 shine through the dusty grass and nettles that have been growing up 
 round them all the summer out of the ditch. 
 
 Flowers were one reason for our wanting to go to Mary's Meadow. 
 Another reason was the nightingale. There was one that used always 
 to sing there, and Mother had made us a story about it. 
 
 We are very fond of fairy books, and one of our greatest favourites 
 is Bechstein's " As Pretty as Seven." It has very nice pictures, and we 
 particularly like "The Man in the Moon, and How He Came There;" 
 but the story doesn't end well, for he came there by gathering sticks on 
 Sunday, and then scoffing about it, and he has been there ever since. 
 But Mother made us a new fairy tale about the nightingale in Mary's 
 Meadow being the naughty woodcutter's only child, who was turned into 
 a little brown bird that lives on in the woods, and sits on a tree on 
 summer nights, and sings to its father up in the moon. 
 
 But after our Father and the Old Squire went to law, Mother told 
 
14 SINGEST OF SUMMER IN FULL-THROATED EASE. 
 
 us we must be content with hearing the nightingale from a distance. We 
 did not really know about the lawsuit then, we only understood that the 
 Old Squire was rather crosser than usual ; and we rather resented being 
 warned not to go into Mary's Meadow, especially as Father kept saying 
 we had a perfect right so to do. I thought that Mother was probably 
 afraid of Saxon being set at us, and of course I had no fears about him. 
 Indeed, I used to wish that it could happen that the Old Squire, riding 
 after me as full of fury as King Padella in the " Rose and the Ring," 
 might set Saxon on me, as the lions were let loose to eat the Princess 
 Rosalba. " Instead of devouring her with their great teeth, it was with 
 kisses they gobbled her up. They licked her pretty feet, they nuzzled 
 their noses in her lap," and she put her arms " round their tawny necks 
 and kissed them." Saxon gobbles us with kisses, and nuzzles his nose, 
 and we put our arms round his tawny neck. What a surprise it would be 
 to the Old Squire to see him ! And then I wondered if my feet were as 
 pretty as Rosalba' s, and I thought they were, and I wondered if Saxon 
 would lick them, supposing that by any possibility it could ever happen 
 that I should be barefoot in Mary's Meadow at the mercy of the Old 
 Squire and his bull-dog. 
 
 One does not, as a rule, begin to go to bed by letting down one's 
 hair, and taking off one's shoes and stockings. But one night I was 
 silly enough to do this, just to see if I looked (in the mirror) at all 
 like the picture of Rosalba in the " Rose and the Ring." I was trying 
 to see my feet as well as my hair, when I heard Arthur jumping the 
 three steps in the middle of the passage between his room and mine. I 
 had only just time to spring into the window seat, and tuck my feet under 
 me, when he gave a hasty knock, and bounced in with his telescope in 
 his hand. 
 
 " Oh, Mary," he cried, " I want you to see the Old Squire, with a 
 great-coat over his evening clothes, and a squosh hat, marching up and 
 down Mary's Meadow." 
 
 And he pulled up my blind, and threw open the window, and 
 arranged the telescope for me. 
 
 It was a glorious night. The moon was rising round and large out 
 of the mist, and dark against its brightness I could see the figure of the 
 Old Squire pacing the pathway over Mary's Meadow. 
 
 Saxon was not there; but on a slender branch of a tree in the 
 hedgerow sat the nightingale, singing to comfort the poor, lonely old 
 Man in the Moon. 
 
'5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ADY CATHERINE is Mother's aunt 
 by marriage, and Mother is one of the 
 few people she is not rude to. 
 
 She is very rude, and yet she is very 
 kind, especially to the poor. But she 
 does kind things so rudely, that people 
 now and then wish that she would mind 
 her own business instead. Father says 
 so, though Mother would say that that is 
 gossip. But I think sometimes that 
 Mother is thinking of Aunt Catherine 
 when she tells us that in kindness it is 
 not enough to be good to others, one 
 should also learn to be gracious. 
 
 Mother thought she was very rude 
 to her once, when she said, quite out 
 loud, that Father is very ill-tempered, and that, if Mother had 
 not the temper of an angel, the house could never hold together. 
 Mother was very angry, but Father did not mind. He says our house 
 will hold together much longer than most houses, because he swore at 
 the workmen, and went to law with the builder for using dirt instead 
 of mortar, so the builder had to pull down what was done wrong, and 
 do it right ; and Father says he knows he has a bad temper, but he 
 does not mean to pull the house over our heads at present, unless he 
 has to get bricks out to heave at Lady Catherine if she becomes quite 
 unbearable. 
 
 We do not like dear Father to be called bad-tempered. He comes 
 home cross sometimes, and then we have to be very. quiet, and keep 
 out of the way;' and sometimes he goes out rather cross, but not 
 always. It was what Chris said about that that pleased Lady Catherine 
 so much. 
 
1 6 DO ALL YOU CAN TO BE GOOD, 
 
 It was one day when Father came home cross, and was very much 
 vexed to find us playing about the house. Arthur had got a new 
 adventure book, and he had been reading to us about the West Coast 
 of Africa, and niggers, and tom-tom's, and " going Fantee ; " and James 
 gave him a lot of old corks out of the pantry, and let him burn them 
 in a candle. It rained, and we could not go out ; so we all blacked 
 our faces with burnt cork, and played at the West Coast in one of the 
 back passages, and at James being the captain of a slave ship, because 
 he tried to catch us when we beat the tom-toms too near him when he 
 was cleaning the plate, to make him give us rouge and whitening to 
 tattoo with. 
 
 Dear Father came home rather earlier than we expected, and 
 rather cross. Chris did not hear the front door, because his ears were 
 pinched up with tying curtain rings on to them, and just at that minute 
 he shouted, " I go Fantee!" and tore his pinafore right up the middle, 
 and burst into the front hall with it hanging in two pieces by the arm- 
 holes, his eyes shut, and a good grab of James's rouge powder smudged 
 on his nose, yelling and playing the tom-tom on what is left of Arthur's 
 drum. 
 
 Father was very angry indeed, and Chris was sent to bed, and not 
 allowed to go down to dessert ; and Lady Catherine was dining at our 
 house, so he misled her. 
 
 Next time she called, and saw Chris, she asked him why he had 
 not been at dessert that night. Mother looked at Chris, and said, "Why 
 was it, Chris? Tell Aunt Catherine." Mother thought he would say, 
 " Because I tore my pinafore, and made a noise in the front hall." But 
 he smiled, the grave way Chris does, and said, " Because Father came 
 home cross." And Lady Catherine was pleased, but Mother was vexed. 
 
 I am quite sure Chris meant no harm, but he does say very funny 
 things. Perhaps it is because his head is rather large for his body, 
 with some water having got into his brain when he was very little, so 
 that we have to take great care of him. And though he does say very 
 odd things, very slowly, I do not think any one of us tries harder to be 
 good. 
 
 I remember once Mother had been trying to make us forgive each 
 other's trespasses, and Arthur would say that you cannot make yourself 
 feel kindly to them that trespass against you ; and Mother said if you 
 make yourself do right, then at last you get to feel right ; and it was 
 very soon after this that Harry and Christopher quarrelled, and would 
 
AND YOU'LL BE SO. 1 7 
 
 not forgive each other's trespasses in the least, in spite of all that I 
 could do to try and make peace between them. 
 
 Chris went off in the sulks, but after a long time I came upon him 
 in the toy-cupboard, looking rather pale and very large-headed, and 
 winding up his new American top, and talking to himself. 
 
 When he talks to himself he mutters, so I could only just hear 
 what he was saying, and he said it over and over again : 
 
 " Dos first and feels afterwards:' 
 
 " What are you doing, Chris ? " I asked. 
 
 " I'm getting ready my new top to give to Harry. Dos first and 
 feels afterwards? 
 
 " Well," I said, " Christopher, you are a good boy." 
 
 " I should like to punch his head," said Chris — and he said it in 
 just the same sing-song tone — "but I'm getting the top ready. Dos 
 first and feels afterwards! 1 
 
 And he went on winding and muttering. 
 
 Afterwards he told me that the "feels" came sooner than he 
 expected. Harry wouldn't take his top, and they made up their quarrel. 
 
 Christopher is very simple, but sometimes we think he is also a 
 little sly. He can make very wily excuses about things he does not 
 like. 
 
 He does not like Nurse to hold back his head and wash his face ; 
 and at last one day she let him go downstairs with a dirty face, and 
 then complained to Mother. So Mother asked Chris why he was so 
 naughty about having his face washed, and he said, quite gravely, " I 
 do think it would be such pity if the water got into my head again by 
 accident." Mother did not know he had ever heard about it, but she 
 said, " Oh, Chris ! Chris ! that's one of your excuses." And he said, 
 " It's not my 'saisis. She lets a good deal get in — at my ears — and 
 lather too." 
 
 But, with all his whimsical ways, Lady Catherine is devoted to 
 Christopher. She likes him far better than any one of us, and he is 
 very fond of her ; and they say quite rude things to each other all 
 along. And Father says it is very lucky, for if she had not been so 
 fond of Chris, and so ready to take him too, Mother would never have 
 been persuaded to leave us when Aunt Catherine took them to the 
 South of France. 
 
 Mother had been very unwell for a long time. She has so many 
 worries, and Dr. Solomon said she ought to avoid worry, and Aunt 
 
 C 
 
18 DEPARTURES AND SUBSTITUTES. 
 
 Catherine said worries were killing her, and Father said " Pshaw ! '' 
 and Aunt Catherine said " Care killed the cat," and that a cat has nine 
 lives, and a woman has only one ; and then Mother got worse, and 
 Aunt Catherine wanted to take her abroad, and she wouldn't go ; and 
 then Christopher was ill, and Aunt Catherine said she would take him 
 too, if only Mother would go with her; and Dr. Solomon said it might 
 be the turning-point of his health, and Father said, "the turning-point 
 which way ? " but he thanked Lady Catherine, and they didn't quarrel ; 
 and so Mother yielded, and it was settled that they should go. 
 
 Before they went, Mother spoke to me, and told me I must be a 
 Little Mother to the others whilst she was away. She hoped we should 
 all try to please Father, and to be unselfish with each other ; but she 
 expected me to try far harder than the others, and never to think of 
 myself at all, so that I might fill her place whilst she was away. So I 
 promised to try, and I did. 
 
 We missed Christopher sadly. And Saxon missed him. The first 
 time Saxon came to see us after Mother and Chris went away, we told 
 him all about it, and he looked very sorry. Then we said that he 
 should be our brother in Christopher's stead, whilst Chris was away ; 
 and he looked very much pleased, and wagged his tail, and licked our 
 faces all round. So we told him to come and see us very often. 
 
 He did not, but we do not think it was his fault. He is chained up 
 so much. 
 
 One day Arthur and I were walking down the road outside the 
 Old Squire's stables, and Saxon smelt us, and we could hear him run 
 and rattle his chain, and he gave deep, soft barks. 
 
 Arthur laughed. He said, " Do you hear Saxon, Mary ? Now I 
 dare say the Old Squire thinks he smells tramps and wants to bite them. 
 He doesn't know that Saxon smells his new sister and brother, and 
 wishes he could go out walking with them in Mary's Meadow." 
 
CHAPTER 111. 
 
 OTHING comforted 
 
 us so much whilst 
 
 Mother and Chris were 
 
 away as being 
 
 allowed to play 
 
 in the Library. 
 
 We were not 
 usually allowed 
 to be there so 
 often, but when 
 we asked Father 
 he gave us leave 
 £&-^ to amuse our- 
 
 selves there at the time when Mother would have had us with her, 
 provided that we did not bother him or hurt the books. We did not 
 hurt the books, and in the end we were allowed to go there as much as 
 we liked. 
 
 We have plenty of books of our own, and we have new ones very 
 often : on birthdays and at Christmas. Sometimes they are interesting, 
 and sometimes they are disappointing. Most of them have pretty 
 pictures. It was because we had been rather unlucky for some time, 
 and had had disappointing ones on our birthdays, that Arthur said to 
 me, " Look here, Mary, I'm not going to read any books now but 
 grown-up ones, unless it is an Adventure Book. I'm sick of books for 
 young people, there's so much stuff m them." 
 
 We call it stuff when there seems to be going to be a story and it 
 comes to nothing but talk ; and we call it stuff when there is a very 
 interesting picture, and you read to see what it is about, and the reading 
 does not tell you, or tells you wrong. 
 
 Both Arthur and Christopher had had disappointments in their 
 books on their birthdays. 
 
 Arthur jumped at his book at first, because there were Japanese 
 pictures in it, and Uncle Charley had just been staying with us, and 
 had brought beautiful Japanese pictures with him, and had told us 
 Japanese fairy tales, and they were as good as Bechstein. So Arthur 
 was full of Japan. 
 
 The most beautiful picture of all was of a stork, high up in a tall 
 
20 MISI. LADINGS. 
 
 tall pine tree, and the branches of the pine tree, and the cones, and the 
 pine needles were most beautifully drawn ; and there was a nest with 
 young storks in it, and behind the stork and the nest and the tall pine 
 the sun was blazing with all his rays. And Uncle Charley told us the 
 story to it, and it was called " the Nest of the Stork." 
 
 So when Arthur saw a stork standing among pine needles in his 
 new book he shouted with delight, though the pine needles were rather 
 badly done, with thick strokes. But presently he said, " It's not nearly 
 so good a stork as Uncle Charley's. And where's the stem of the pine? 
 It looks as if the stork were on the ground and on the top of the pine 
 tree too, and there's no nest. And there's no sun. And, oh ! Mary, 
 what do you think is written under it ? ' Crane a?id Water-reeds! 
 Well, I do call that a sell ! " 
 
 Christopher's disappointment was quite as bad. ' Mother gave him 
 a book with very nice pictures, particularly of beasts. The chief reason 
 she got it for him was that there was such a very good picture of a 
 toad, and Chris is so fond of toads. For months he made friends 
 with one in the garden. It used to crawl away from him, and he used 
 to creep after it, talking to it, and then it used to half begin to crawl up 
 the garden wall, and stand so, on its hind legs, and let Chris rub its 
 wrinkled back. The toad in the picture was exactly like Christopher's 
 toad, and he ran about the house with the book in his arms begging us 
 to read him the story about Dear Toady. 
 
 We were all busy but Arthur, and he said, " I want to go on with 
 my water-wheel." But Mother said, " Don't be selfish, Arthur." And 
 he said, "I forgot. All right, Chris; bring me the book." So they 
 went and sat in the conservatory, not to disturb anyone. But very soon 
 they came back, Chris crying, and saying, " It couldn't be the right one, 
 Arthur;" and Arthur frowning, and saying, "It is the right. story; but 
 it's stuff. I'll tell you what that book's good for, Chris. To paint the 
 pictures. And you've got a new paint-box." So Mother said, " What's 
 the matter?" And Arthur said, "Chris thinks I haven't read him the 
 right story to his Toad Picture. But I have, and what do you think it's 
 about? It's about the silliest little girl you can imagine — a regular 
 mawk of a girl — and a Frog. Not a toad, but a F. R. O. G. frog ! 
 A regular hop, skip, jumping frog ! " 
 
 Arthur hopped round the room, but Chris cried bitterly. So Arthur 
 ran up to him and kissed him, and said, " Don't cry, old chap. I'll tell 
 vou what I'll do. You get Mary to cut out a lot of the leaves of your 
 
MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 21 
 
 book that have no pictures, and that will make it like a real scrap-book ; 
 and then I'll give you a lot of my scraps and pictures to paste over 
 what's left of the stories, and you'll have such a painting-book as you 
 never had in all your life before." 
 
 So we did. And Arthur was very good, for he gave Chris pictures 
 that I know he prized, because Chris liked them. But the veiy first 
 picture he gave him was the " Crane and Water-reeds." 
 
 I thought it so good of Arthur to be so nice with Chris that I 
 wished I could have helped him over his water-wheel. He had put 
 Japan out of his head since the disappointment, and spent all his play- 
 time in making mills and machinery. He did grind some corn into 
 flour once, but it was not at all white. He said that was because the 
 bran was left in. But it was not only bran in Arthur's flour. There 
 was a good deal of sand too, from his millstones being made of- sand- 
 stone, which he thought would not matter. But it grinds off. 
 
 Down in the valley, below Mary's Meadow, runs the Ladybrook, 
 which turns the old water-wheel of Mary's Mill. It is a very picturesque 
 old mill, and Mother has made beautiful sketches of it. She caught the 
 last cold she got before going abroad with sketching it — the day we 
 had a most delightful picnic there, and went about in the punt. And 
 from that afternoon Arthur made up his mind that his next mill should 
 be a water mill. 
 
 The reason I am no good at helping Arthur about his mills is that 
 I am stupid about machinery ; and I was so vexed not to help him, that 
 when I saw a book in the library which I thought would do so, I did 
 not stop to take it out, for it was in four very large volumes, but ran off 
 at once to tell Arthur. 
 
 He said, " What is the matter, Mary ? " 
 
 I said, " Oh, Arthur ! I've found a book that will tell you all about 
 mills ; and it is the nicest smelling book in the Library." 
 
 " The nicest smelling ? What's that got to do with mills ? " 
 
 " Nothing, of course. But it's bound in russia, and I am so fond 
 of the smell of russia. But that's nothing. It's a Miller's Dictionary, 
 and it is in four huge volumes, ' with plates.' I should think you could 
 look out all about every kind of mill there ever was a miller to." 
 
 " If the plates give sections and diagrams " — Arthur began, but I 
 did not hear the rest, for he started off for the library at once, and I ran 
 after him. 
 
 But when we got Miller's Dictionary on the floor, how he did 
 
2 2 WONDROUS INDEED IS THE VIRTUE OF A TRUE BOOK ! 
 
 tease me ! For there was nothing about mills or millers in it. It was 
 a Gardener's and Botanist's Dictionary, by Philip Miller ; and the 
 plates were plates of flowers, very truly drawn, like the pine tree in 
 Uncle Charley's Jap. picture. There were some sections too, but they 
 were sections of greenhouses, not of any kinds of mills or machinery. 
 
 The odd thing was that it turned out a kind of help to Arthur after 
 all. For we got so much interested in it that it roused us up about our 
 gardens. We are all very fond of flowers, I most of all. And at last 
 Arthur said he thought that miniature mills were really rather hum- 
 bugging things, and it would be much easier and more useful to build a 
 cold frame to keep choice auriculas and half-hardies in. 
 
 When we took up our gardens so hotly, Harry and Adela took up 
 theirs, and we did a great deal, for the weather was fine. 
 
 We were surprised to find that the Old Squire's Scotch Gardener 
 knew Miller's Gardener's Dictionary quite well. He said, " It's a gran' 
 wurrk ! " (Arthur can say it just like him.) 
 
 One day he wished he could see it, and smell the russia binding ; 
 he said he liked to feel a nice smell. Father was away, and we were 
 by ourselves, so we invited him into the library. Saxon wanted to come 
 in too, but the gardener was very cross with him, and sent him out ; 
 and he sat on the mat outside and dribbled with longing to get in, and 
 thudded his stiff tail whenever he saw anyone through the doorway. 
 
 The Scotch Gardener enjoyed himself very much, and he explained 
 a lot of things to Arthur, and helped us to put away the Dictionary 
 when we had done with it. 
 
 When he took up his hat to go, he gave one long look all round 
 the library. Then he turned to Arthur (and Saxon took advantage of 
 this to wag his way in and join the party), and said, "It's a rare privilege, 
 the free entry of a book chamber like this. I'm hoping, young gentle- 
 man, that you're not insensible of it? " 
 
 Then he caught sight of Saxon, and beat him out of the room with 
 his hat. 
 
 But he came back himself to say, that it might just happen that he 
 would be glad now and again to hear what was said about this or that 
 plant (of which he would write down the botanical name) in these noble 
 volumes. 
 
 So we told him that if he would bring Saxon to see us pretty often, 
 we would look out anything he wanted to know about in Miller's 
 Gardener's Dictionary. 
 
" The Scotch Gardener enjoyed himself very much, and he explained a lot of things ta 
 Arthur, and helped us to put away the Dictionary when we had done with it." — Page 22. 
 
24 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OOKING round the library one day, 
 to see if I could see any more books 
 about gardening, I found the Book of 
 Paradise. 
 
 It is a very old book, 
 and very queer. It has a 
 brown leather back — not 
 russia — and stiff little gold 
 flowers and ornaments all the 
 way down, where Miller's 
 Dictionary has gold swans in 
 crowns, and ornaments. 
 
 There are a good many 
 old books in the library, but 
 they are not generally very 
 interesting — at least not to 
 us. So when I found that 
 though this one had a Latin 
 name on the title page, it was 
 written in English, and that 
 though it seemed to be about 
 Paradise., it was really about 
 a garden, and quite common 
 flowers, I was delighted, for I 
 always have cared more for 
 gardening and flowers than for any other amusement, long before we 
 found Miller's Gardener's Dictionary. And the Book of Paradise is 
 much smaller than the dictionary, and easier to hold. And I like 
 old, queer things, and it is very old and queer. 
 
 The Latin name is " Paradisi in sole, Paradisus terrestris" which 
 we do not any of us understand, though we are all learning Latin ; so 
 we call it the Book of Paradise. But the English name is — " Or a 
 
GOD ALMIGHTY FIRST PLANTED A GARDEN; 25 
 
 Garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will 
 permitt to be noursed up ; " and on the top of every page is written 
 "The Garden of Pleasant Flowers," and it says — "Collected by John 
 Parkinson, Apothecary of London, and the King's Herbarist, 1629." 
 
 I had to think a minute to remember who was the king then, and 
 it was King Charles I. ; so then I knew that it was Queen Henrietta to 
 whom the book was dedicated. This was the dedication : — 
 
 " To the Queen's most Excellent Majesty. 
 
 " Madame, — Knowing your Majesty so much delighted with all the fair flowers 
 of a Garden, and furnished with them as far beyond others as you are eminent before 
 them ; this my Work of a Garden long before this intended to be published, and but 
 now only finished, seemed as it were destined to be first offered into your Highness's 
 hands as of right, challenging the propriety of Patronage from all others. Accept, 1 
 beseech your Majesty, this speaking Garden, that may inform you in all the particulars 
 of your store as well as wants, when you cannot see- any of them fresh upon the 
 ground : and it shall further encourage him to accomplish the remainder ; who in 
 praying that your Highness may enjoy the heavenly Paradise, after many years' 
 fruition of this earthly, submitteth to be your Majesties, 
 
 " In all humble devotion, 
 
 "John Parkinson." 
 
 We like queer old things like this, they are so funny ! I liked the 
 Dedication, and I wondered if the Queen's Garden really was an Earthly 
 Paradise, and whether she did enjoy reading John Parkinson's book 
 about flowers in the winter time, when her own flowers were no longer 
 " fresh upon the ground." And then I wondered what flowers she had, 
 and I looked out a great many of our chief favourites, and she had 
 several kinds of them. 
 
 We are particulary fond of Daffodils, and she had several kinds of 
 Daffodils, from the " Primrose "Peerlesse," * "of a sweet but stuffing 
 scent," to "the least Daffodil of all,"t which the book says "was 
 brought to us by a Frenchman called Francis le Vean, the honestest 
 root-gatherer that ever came over to us." 
 
 The Queen had Cowslips too, though our gardener despised them 
 when he saw them in my garden. I dug mine up in Mary's Meadow 
 
 * Narcissus medio lutens vulgaris. 
 t Narcissus minimus, Parkinson. N. mhior, Miller. 
 
26 AND IT IS THE PUREST OF HUMAN PLEASURES. 
 
 before Father and the Old Squire went to law; but they were only 
 common Cowslips, with one Oxlip, by good luck. In the Earthly 
 Paradise there were " double Cowslips, one within another." And they 
 were called Hose-in-Hose. I wished I had Hose-in-Hose. 
 
 Arthur was quite as much delighted with the Book of Paradise 
 as I. He said, " Isn't it funny to think of Queen Henrietta Maria 
 gardening. I wonder if she went trailing up and down the walks 
 looking like that picture of her we saw when you and I were in London 
 with Mother about our teeth, and went to see the Loan Collection of 
 Old Masters. , I wonder if the Dwarf picked the flowers for her. I do 
 wonder what Apothecary John Parkinson looked like when he offered 
 his Speaking Garden into her Highnesses' hands. And what beautiful 
 hands she had ! Do you remember the picture, Mary ? It was by 
 Vandyke." 
 
 I remembered it quite well. 
 
 That afternoon the others could not amuse themselves, and wanted 
 me to tell them a story. They do not like old stories too often, and it 
 is rather difficult to invent new ones. Sometimes we do it by turns. 
 We sit in a circle and one of us begins, and the next must add some- 
 thing, and so we go on. But that way does not make a good plot. 
 My head was so full of the Book of Paradise that afternoon that I 
 could not think of a story, but I said I would begin one. So I began : 
 
 " Once upon a time there was a Queen — " 
 
 " How was she dressed ? " asked Adela, who thinks a good deal 
 about dress. 
 
 " She had a beautiful dark-blue satin robe." 
 
 " Princesse shape ? " inquired Adela. 
 
 " No ; Queen's shape," said Arthur. " Drive on, Mary." 
 
 " And lace ruffles falling back from her Highness' hands — " 
 
 " Sweet ! " murmured Adela. 
 
 "And a high hat, with plumes, on her head, and — 
 
 " A very low dwarf at her heels," added Arthur. 
 
 " Was there really a dwarf, Mary ? " asked Harry. 
 
 "There was," said I. 
 
 " Had he a hump, or was he only a plain dwarf ? " 
 
 " He was a very plain dwarf," said Arthur. 
 
 " Does Arthur know the story, Mary ? " 
 
 " No, Harry, he doesn't ; and he oughtn't to interfere till I come to 
 a stop." 
 
what's in a name? 27 
 
 " Beg pardon, Mary. Drive on." 
 
 " The Queen was very much delighted with all fair flowers, and she 
 had a garden so full of them that it was called the Earthly Paradise." 
 
 There was a long-drawn and general " Oh ! " of admiration. 
 
 " But though she was a Queen, she couldn't have flowers in the 
 winter, not even in an Earthly Paradise." 
 
 " Don't you suppose she had a greenhouse, by-the-bye, Mary ? " 
 said Arthur. 
 
 " Oh, Arthur," cried Harry, " I do wish you'd be quiet : when you 
 know it's a fairy story, and that Queens of that sort never had green- 
 houses or anything like we have now." 
 
 " And so the King's Apothecary and Herbarist, whose name was 
 John Parkinson — " « 
 
 " I shouldn't have thought he would have had a common name 
 like that," said Harry. 
 
 "Bessy's name is Parkinson," said Adela. 
 
 " Well, I can't help it ; his name was John Parkinson." 
 
 " Drive on, Mary ! " said Arthur. 
 
 " And he made her a book, called the Book of Paradise, in which 
 there were pictures and written accounts of her flowers, so that when 
 she could not see any of them fresh upon the ground, she could read 
 about them, and think about them, and count up how many she had." 
 
 " Ah, but she couldn't tell. Some of them might have died in the 
 winter," said Adela 
 
 "Ah, but some of the others might have got little ones at their 
 roots," said Harry. " So that would make up." 
 
 I said nothing. I was glad of the diversion, for I could not think 
 how to go on with the story. Before I quite gave in, Harry luckily 
 asked, " Was there a Weeding Woman in the Earthly Paradise ? " 
 
 " There was," said I. 
 
 " How was she dressed ? " asked Adela. 
 
 " She had a dress the colour of common earth." 
 
 " Princesse shape ? " inquired Arthur. 
 
 " No ; Weeding Woman shape. Arthur, I wish you wouldn't — " 
 
 "All right, Mary. Drive on." 
 
 " And a little shawl, that had partly the colour of grass, and partly 
 the colour of hay." 
 
 '•'■Hay, dear /" interpolated Arthur, exactly imitating a well-known 
 sigh peculiar to Bessy's aunt. 
 
28 ONE MAN PICK'D OUT OF TEN THOUSAND. 
 
 "Was her bonnet like our weeding woman's bonnet?" asked 
 Adela, in a disappointed tone. 
 
 "Much larger," said I, "and the colour of a Marigold." 
 
 Adela looked happier. " Strings the same ? " she asked. 
 
 " No. One string canary-colour, and the other white." 
 
 " And a basket ? " asked Harry. 
 
 " Yes, a basket, of course. Well, the Queen had all sorts of flowers 
 in her garden. Some of them were natives of the country, and some of 
 them were brought to her from countries far away, by men called Root- 
 gatherers. There were very beautiful Daffodils in the Earthly Paradise, 
 but the smallest of all the Daffodils — " 
 
 " A Dwarf, like the Hunchback ? " said Harry. 
 
 " The Dwarf Daffodil of all was brought to her by a man called 
 Francis le Vean." 
 
 '• That was a much nicer name than John Parkinson," said Harry. 
 
 " And he was the honestest Root-gatherer that ever brought foreign 
 flowers into the Earthly Paradise." 
 
 " Then I love him ! " said Harry. 
 
29 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 NE sometimes thinks it is very easy to 
 jbe good, and then there comes something 
 'which makes it very hard. 
 
 I liked being a Little Mother to the 
 others, and almost enjoyed giving way to 
 them. "Others first, Little Mothers after- 
 wards," as we used to say — till the day I 
 made up that story for them out of the Book 
 of Paradise. 
 
 The idea of it took our fancy com- 
 pletely, the others as well as mine, and 
 though the story was constantly interrupted, 
 and never came to any real plot or end, 
 there were no Queens, or dwarfs, or charac- 
 ters of any kind in all Bechstein's fairy tales, or even in Grimm, more 
 popular than the Queen of the Blue Robe and her Dwarf, and the 
 Honest Root-gatherer, and John Parkinson, King's Apothecary and 
 Herbarist, and the Weeding Woman of the Earthly Paradise. 
 
 When I said, " Wouldn't it be a good new game to have an Earthly 
 Paradise in our gardens, and to have a King's Apothecary and Herbarist 
 to gather things and make medicine of them, and an Honest Root- 
 gatherer to divide the polyanthus plants and the bulbs when we take them 
 up, and divide them fairly, and a Weeding Woman to work and make 
 things tidy, and a Queen in a blue dress, and Saxon for the Dwarf " — 
 the others set up such a shout of approbation that Father sent James to 
 inquire if we imagined that he was going to allow his house to be turned 
 into a bear-garden. 
 
 And Arthur said, " No. Tell him we're only turning it into a Speak- 
 ing Garden, and we're going to turn our own gardens into an Earthly 
 Paradise." 
 
 But I said, " Oh, James ! please don't say anything of the kind. 
 Say we're very sorry, and we will be quite quiet." 
 
30 A NEW GAME. 
 
 And James said, " Trust me, Miss. It would be a deal more than 
 my place is worth to carry Master Arthur's messages to his Pa." 
 
 "I'll be the Honestest Root-gatherer," said Harry. "I'll take 
 up Dandelion roots to the very bottom, and sell them to the King's 
 Apothecary to make Dandelion tea of." 
 
 " That's a good idea of yours, Harry," said Arthur. " I shall be 
 Tohn Parkinson — " 
 
 " My name is Francis le Vean," said Harry. 
 
 " King's Apothecary and Herbarist," continued Arthur disdaining 
 the interruption. And I'll bet you my Cloth of Gold Pansy to your 
 Black Prince that Bessy's aunt takes three bottles of my dandelion and 
 chamomile mixture for 'the swimmings,' bathes her eyes every morning 
 with my elder flower lotion to strengthen the sight, and sleeps every 
 night on my herb pillow (if Mary'll make me a flannel bag) before the 
 week's out." 
 
 " I could make you a flannel bag," said Adela, " if Mary will make 
 me a bonnet, so that I can be the Weeding Woman. You could make 
 it of tissue paper, with stiff paper inside, like all those caps you made 
 for us last Christmas, Mary, dear, couldn't you ? And there is some 
 lovely orange-coloured paper, I know, and pale yellow, and white. The 
 bonnet was Marygold colour, was it not? And one string canary- 
 coloured and one white. I couldn't tie them, of course, being paper ; 
 but Bessy's aunt doesn't tie her bonnet. She wears it like a helmet, to 
 shade her eyes. I shall wear mine so too. It will be all Marygold, 
 won't it, dear ? Front and crown ; and the white string going back 
 over one shoulder and the canary string over the other. They might 
 be pinned together behind, perhaps, if they were in my way. Don't you 
 think so?" 
 
 I said " Yes," because if one does not say something, Adela never 
 stops saying whatever it is she is saying, even if she has to say it two or 
 three times over. 
 
 But I felt so cross and so selfish, that if Mother cotdd have known 
 she would have despised me ! 
 
 For the truth was, I had set my heart upon being the Weeding 
 Woman. I thought Adela would want to be the Queen, because of the 
 blue dress, and the plumed hat, and the lace ruffles. Besides, she likes 
 picking flowers, but she never liked grubbing. She would not really like 
 the Weeding Woman's work; it was the bonnet that had caught her 
 fancy, and I found it hard to smother the vexing thought that if I had 
 
GIVE UNTO ME, MADE LOWLY WISE, 3 1 
 
 gone on dressing the Weeding Woman of the Earthly Paradise like 
 Bessy's aunt, instead of trying to make the story more interesting by 
 inventing a marygold bonnet with yellow and white strings for her, I 
 might have had the part I wished to play in our new game (which 
 certainly was of my devising), and Adela would have been better pleased 
 to be the Queen than to be anything else. 
 
 As it was, I knew that if I asked her she would give up the Weed- 
 ing Woman. Adela is very good, and she is very good-natured. And I 
 knew, too, that it would not have cost her much. She would have given 
 a sigh about the bonnet, and then have turned her whole attention to a 
 blue robe, and how to manage the ruffles. 
 
 But even whilst I was thinking about it, Arthur said : " Of course, 
 Mary must be the Queen, unless we could think of something else — very 
 good — for her. If we could have thought of something, Mary, I was 
 thinking how jolly it would be, when Mother comes home, to have had 
 her for the Queen, with Chris for her Dwarf, and to give her flowers out 
 of our Earthly Paradise." 
 
 " She would look just like a Queen," said Harry. 
 
 " In her navy blue nun's cloth and Russian lace," said Adela. 
 
 That settled the question. Nothing could be so nice as to have 
 Mother in the game, and the plan provided for Christopher also. I had 
 no wish to be Queen, as far as that went. Dressing up, and walking 
 about the garden would be no fun for me. I really had looked forward 
 to clearing away big baskets full of weeds and rubbish, and keeping our 
 five gardens and the paths between them so tidy as they had never been 
 kept before. And I knew the weeds would have a fine time of it with 
 Adela, as Weeding Woman, in a tissue paper bonnet ! 
 
 But one thing was more important than tidy gardens — not to be 
 selfish. 
 
 I had been left as Little Mother to the others, and I had been lucky 
 enough to think of a game that pleased them. If I turned selfish now, 
 it would spoil everything. 
 
 So I said that Arthur's idea was excellent ; that I had no wish to be 
 Queen, that I thought I might, perhaps, devise another character for 
 myself by-and-by ; and that if the others would leave me alone, I would 
 think about it whilst I was making Adela's bonnet. 
 
 The others were quite satisfied. Father says people always are 
 satisfied with things in general, when they've got what they want for them- 
 selves, and I think that is true. 
 
32 THE SPIRIT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 
 
 I got the tissue paper and the gum ; resisted Adela's extreme desire 
 to be with me and talk about the bonnet, and shut myself up in the 
 library. 
 
 I got out the Book of Paradise too, and propped it up in an arm- 
 chair, and sat on a footstool in front of it, so that I could read in between 
 whiles of making the bonnet. There is an index, so that you can look 
 out the flowers you want to read about. It was no use our looking out 
 flowers, except common ones, such as Harry would be allowed to get 
 bits of out of the big garden to plant in our little gardens, when he 
 became our Honest Root-gatherer. 
 
 I looked at the Cowslips again. I am very fond of them, and so 
 they say, are nightingales ; which is, perhaps, why that nightingale we 
 know lives in Mary's Meadow, for it is full of cowslips. 
 
 The Queen had a great many kinds, and there are pictures of most 
 of them. She had the Common Field Cowslip, the Primrose Cowslip, 
 the Single Green Cowslip, Curled Cowslips, or Galligaskins, Double 
 Cowslips, or Hose-in- Hose, and the Franticke or Foolish Cowslip, or 
 Jackanapes on Horsebacke. 
 
 I did not know one of them except the Common Cowslip, but I 
 remembered that Bessy's aunt once told me that she had a double 
 cowslip. It was the day I was planting common ones in my garden, 
 when our gardener despised them. Bessy's aunt despised them too, and 
 she said the double ones were only fit for a cottage garden. I laughed 
 so much that I tore the canary-coloured string as I was gumming it on to 
 the bonnet, to think how I could tell her now that cowslips are Queen's 
 flowers, the common ones as well as the Hose-in-Hose. 
 
 Then I looked out the Honeysuckle, it was page 404, and there 
 were no pictures. I began at the beginning of the chapter ; this was it, 
 and it was as funnily spelt as the preface, but I could read it. 
 
 " Chap. cv. Periclymemum. Honeysuckles. 
 
 " The Honisucle that groweth wilde in euery hedge, although it be 
 very sweete, yet doe I not bring it into my garden, but let it rest in his 
 owne place, to serue their senses that trauell by it, or haue no garden." 
 
 I had got so far when James came in. He said — " Letters, miss." 
 
 It was the second post, and there was a letter for me, and a book 
 parcel ; both from Mother. 
 
 Mother's letters are always delightful ; and, like things she says, 
 they often seem to come in answer to something you have been thinking 
 about, and which you would never imagine she could know, unless she 
 
WHAT NO ONE WITH ME SHARES, 33 
 
 was a witch. This was the knowing bit in that letter : — " Your dear 
 father's note this morning did me ??iore good than bottles of tonic. It is 
 due to you, my trustworthy little daughter, to tell you of the bit that pleased 
 me most. He says — ' The children seem to 7ne to be behaving unusually 
 well, and I must say, I believe the credit belongs to Mary. She seems to 
 have a genius for keeping them amused, which luckily means keeping them 
 out of mischief Now, good Little Mother, I wofider how you yourself 
 are being entertained? I hope the others are not presuming on your 
 unselfishness ? Anyhow, I send you a book for your own amusement when 
 they leave you a bit of peace and quiet. I have long been fond of it in 
 French, and I have fowid an English translation with nice little pictures, 
 and send it to you. I know you will enjoy it, because you are so fond of 
 flowersP 
 
 Oh, how glad I was that I had let Adela be the Weeding Woman 
 with a good grace, and could open my book parcel with a clear 
 conscience ! 
 
 I put the old book away and buried myself in the new one. 
 
 I never had a nicer. Tt was called " A Tour Round my Garden," 
 and some of the little stories in it — like the Tulip Rebecca, and the 
 Discomfited Florists — were very amusing indeed ; and some were sad 
 and pretty, like the Yellow Roses ; and there were delicious bits, like 
 the Enriched Woodman and the Connoisseur Deceived ; but there was 
 no "stuff" in it at all. 
 
 Some chapters were duller than others, and at last I got into a very 
 dull one, about the vine, and it had a good deal of Greek in it, and we 
 have not begun Greek. 
 
 But after the Greek, and the part about Bacchus and Anacreon 
 (I did not care about them; they were not in the least like the Dis- 
 comfited Florists, or the Enriched Woodman ! ) there came this, and I 
 liked it the best of all : — 
 
 " At the extremity of my garden the vine extends in long porticoes, 
 through the arcades of which may be seen trees of all sorts, and foliage 
 of all colours. There is an azerolier (a small medlar) which is covered 
 in autumn with little apples, producing the richest effect. I have given 
 away several grafts of this ; far from deriving pleasure from the privation 
 of others, I do my utmost to spread and render common and vulgar all 
 the trees and plants that I prefer ; it is as if I multiplied the pleasure 
 and the chances of beholding them of all who, like me, really love 
 flowers for their splendour, their grace, and their perfume. Those who, 
 
34 SEEMS SCARCE MY OWN. 
 
 on the contrary, are jealous of their plants, and only esteem them in 
 proportion with their conviction that no one else possesses them, do 
 not 1 jve flowers ; and be assured that it is either chance or poverty 
 which has made them collectors of flowers, instead of being collectors 
 of pictures, cameos, medals, or any other thing that might serve as an 
 excuse for indulging in all the joys of possession, seasoned with the 
 idea that others do not possess. 
 
 " I have even carried the vulgarisation of beautiful flowers farther 
 than this. 
 
 " I ramble about the country near my dwelling, and seek the widest 
 and least frequented spots. In these, after clearing and preparing a few 
 inches of ground, I scatter the seeds of my most favourite plants, which 
 re-sow themselves, perpetuate themselves, and multiply themselves. At 
 this moment, whilst the fields display nothing but the common red 
 poppy, strollers find with surprise in certain wild nooks of our country, 
 the most beautiful double poppies, with their white, red, pink, carnation, 
 and variegated blossoms. 
 
 '- At the foot of an isolated tree, instead of the little bindweed 
 with its white flower, may sometimes be found the beautifully climbing 
 convolvulus major, of "all the lovely colours that can be imagined. 
 
 "Sweet peas fasten their tendrils to the bushes, and cover them 
 with the deliciously-scented white, rose-colour, or white and violet 
 butterflies. 
 
 " It affords me immense pleasure to fix upon a wild-rose in a 
 hedge, and graft upon it red and white cultivated roses, sometimes 
 single roses of a magnificent golden yellow, then large Provence roses, 
 or others variegated with red and white. 
 
 "The rivulets in our neighbourhood do not produce on their 
 banks these forget-me-nots, with their blue flowers, with which the 
 rivulet of my garden is adorned ; I mean to save the seed, and scatter 
 it in my walks. 
 
 " I have observed two young wild quince trees in the nearest wood ; 
 next spring I will engraft upon them two of the best kinds of pears. 
 
 " And then, how I enjoy beforehand and in imagination, the plea- 
 sure and surprise which the solitary stroller will experience when he 
 meets in his rambles with those beautiful flowers and these delicious 
 fruits ! 
 
 " This fancy of mine may, one day or another, cause some learned 
 botanist who is herborising in these parts a hundred years hence, to 
 
THE PLACE WHERE THE DEAD PEOPLE WAIT TILL GOD CALL. 35 
 
 print a stupid and startling system. All these beautiful flowers will 
 have become common in the country, and will give it an aspect peculiar 
 to itself ; and, perhaps, chance or the wind will cast a few of the seeds 
 or some of them amidst the grass which shall cover my forgotten 
 grave ! " 
 
 This was the end of the chapter, and then there was a vignette, a 
 very pretty one, of a cross-marked, grass-bound grave. 
 
 Some books, generally grown-up ones, put things into your head 
 with a sort of rush, and now it suddenly rushed into mine — "TAafs 
 what I'll be! I can think of a name hereafter — but that's what I'll do. 
 I'll take seeds and cuttings, and off-shoots from our garden, and set 
 them in waste-places, and hedges, and fields, and I'll make an Earthly 
 Paradise of Mary's Meadow." 
 
36 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 only difficulty about my part 
 was to find a name for it. I might 
 have taken the name of the 
 man who wrote the book — 
 it is Alphonse Karr, — just 
 as Arthur was going to be 
 called John Parkinson. But 
 I am a girl, so it seemed 
 silly to take a man's name. 
 And I wanted some kind 
 of title, too, like King's 
 Apothecary and Herbarist, 
 or Weeding Woman, and 
 Alphonse Karr does not 
 seem to have had any by- 
 name of that sort. 
 
 I had put Adela's 
 bonnet on my head to 
 carry it safely, and was 
 still sitting thinking, when 
 the others burst into the 
 library. 
 
 Arthur was first, waving 
 
 a sheet of paper; but when Adela saw the bonnet, she caught hold 
 
 of his arm and pushed forward. 
 
 " Oh, it's sweet ! Mary, dear, you're an angel. You couldn't be 
 
 better if you were a real milliner and lived in Paris. I'm sure you 
 
 couldn't." 
 
 "Mary," said Arthur, "remove that bonnet, which by no means 
 
 becomes you, and let Adela take it into a corner and gibber over it to 
 
 herself. I want you to hear this." 
 
THE QUEEN OF THE BLUE ROBE. 37 
 
 " You generally do want the platform," I said, laughing. " Adela, 
 I am very glad you like it. To-morrow, if I can find a bit of pink 
 tissue-paper, I think I could gum on little pleats round the edge of the 
 strings as a finish." 
 
 I did not mind how gaudily I dressed the part of Weeding Woman 
 now. 
 
 " You are good, Mary. It will make it simply perfect ; and, kilts 
 don't you think ? Not box pleats ? " 
 
 Arthur groaned. 
 
 " You shall have which you like, dear. Now, Arthur, what is it?" 
 
 Arthur shook out his paper, gave it a flap with the back of his 
 hand, as you do with letters when you are acting, and said — "It's to 
 Mother, and when she gets it, she'll be a good deal astonished, I fancy." 
 
 When I had heard the letter, I thought so too. 
 
 "To the Queen's Most Excellent Maiestie — 
 
 " My Dear Mother, — This is to tell you that we have made you Queen of the 
 Blue Robe, and that your son Christopher is -a dwarf, and we think you'll both be 
 very much pleased when you hear it. He can do as he likes about having a hump 
 back. When you come home we shall give faire flowers into your Highnesse hands — 
 that is if you 11 do what I'm going to ask you, for nobody can grow flowers out of 
 nothing. I want you to write to John— write straight to him, don't put it in your 
 letter to Father -and tell him that you have given us leave to have some of the seed- 
 lings out of the frames, and that he's to dig us up a good big clump of daffodils out of 
 the shrubbery — and we'll divide them fairly, for Harry is the Honestest Root-gatherer 
 that ever came over to us. We have turned the whole of our gardens into a / aradisi 
 in sole Paradisics ten-estris, if you can construe that ; but we must have something to 
 make a start. He's got no end of bedding things over — that are doing nothing in the 
 Kitchen Garden and might just as well be in our Earthly Paradise. And please tell 
 him to keep us a tiny pinch of seed at the bottom of every paper when he is sowing 
 the annuals. A little goes a long way, particularly of poppies. And you might give 
 him a hint to let us have a flower-pot or two now and then (I'm sure he takes ours ii 
 he finds any of our dead window plants lying about), and that he needn't be so mighty 
 mean about the good earth in the potting shed, or the labels either, they're dirt cheap. 
 Mind you write straight. If only you let John know that the gardens don't entirely 
 belong to him, you'll see that what's spare from the big garden would more than set 
 us going; and it shall further encourage him to accomplish the remainder, who in 
 praying that your Highnesse may enjoy the heavenly Paradise after the many years 
 fruition of this earthly, 
 
 " Submitteth to be, Your Maiestie's, in all humble devotion, 
 
 "John Parkinson, 
 " King's Apothecary and Herbarist 
 
 " P. S. — It was Mary's idea." 
 
38 THE WEEDING WOMAN AND HER BONNET. 
 
 " My dear Arthur ! " said I. 
 
 " Well, I know it's not very well mixed," said Arthur. " Not half 
 so well as I intended at first. I meant to write it all in the Parkinson 
 style. But then, I thought, if I put the part about John in queer 
 language and old spelling, she mightn't understand what we want. But 
 every word of the end comes out of the Dedication ; I copied it the 
 other day, and I think she'll find it a puzzlewig when she comes 
 to it." 
 
 After which Arthur folded his paper and put it into an envelope 
 which he licked copiously, and closed the letter with a great deal of 
 display. But then his industry coming to an abrupt end, as it often did, 
 he tossed it to me, saying, "You can address it, Mary; so I enclosed it 
 in my own letter to thank Mother for the book, and I fancy she did 
 write to our gardener, for he gave us a good lot of things, and was 
 much more good-natured than usual. 
 
 After Arthur had tossed his letter to me, he clasped his hands over 
 his head and walked up and down thinking. I thought he was calcula- 
 ting what he should be able to get out of John, for when you are 
 planning about a garden, you seem to have to do so much calculating. 
 Suddenly he stopped in front of me and threw down his arms. " Mary," 
 he said, " if Mother were at home, she would despise us for selfishness, 
 wouldn't she just?" 
 
 " I don't think its selfish to want spare things for our gardens, if 
 she gives us leave," said I. 
 
 "I'm not thinking of that," said Arthur; "and you're not selfish, 
 you never are ; but she would despise me, and Adela, and Harry, be- 
 cause we've taken your game, and got our parts, and you've made that 
 
 preposterous bonnet for Adela to be the Weeding Woman in much 
 
 she'll weed ! " 
 
 " I shall weed," said Adela. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! You'll weed, — Groundsel ! — and leave Mary to get up 
 the docks and dandelions, and clear away the heap. But, never mind. 
 JHere we've taken Mary's game, and she hasn't even got a part." 
 
 " Yes," said I, " I have ; I have got a capital part. I have only 
 to think of a name. 
 
 " How shall you be dressed?" asked Adela. 
 
 "I don't know yet," said I. "I have only just thought of the 
 part." 
 
 "Are you sure it's a good-enough one?" asked Harry, with a grave 
 
THEY ALSO SERVE 39 
 
 and remorseful air ; " because, if not, you must take Francis le Veaa 
 Girls are called Frances sometimes." 
 
 I explained, and I read aloud the bit that had struck my fancy. 
 
 Arthur got restless half-way through, and took out the Book of 
 Paradise. His letter was on his mind, But Adela was truly delighted. 
 
 "Oh, Mary," she said. "It is lovely. And it just suits you. It 
 suits you much better than being a Queen. 
 
 " Much better," said I. 
 
 "You'll be exactly the reverse of me," said Harry. "When I'm 
 digging up, you'll be putting in." 
 
 " Mary," said Arthur, from the corner where he was sitting with the 
 Book of Paradise in his lap, " what have you put a mark in the place 
 about honeysuckle for?" 
 
 " Oh, only because I was just reading there when James brought 
 the letters." 
 
 " John Parkinson can't have been quite so nice a man as Alphonse 
 Karr," said Adela; "not so unselfish. He took care of the Queen's 
 Gardens, but he didn't think of making the lanes and hedges nice for 
 poor wayfarers." 
 
 I was in the rocking-chair, and I rocked harder to shake up some- 
 thing that was coming into my head. Then I remembered. 
 
 "Yes, Adela, he did — a little. He wouldn't root up the honey- 
 suckle out of the hedges (and I suppose he wouldn't let his root 
 gatherers grub it up, either) ; he didn't put it in the Queen's Gardens, 
 but left it wild outside " 
 
 " To serve their senses that travel by it, or have no garden," inter- 
 rupted Arthur, reading from the book, " and, oh, Mary ! that reminds 
 me — travel — travellers. I've got a name for your part just coming into 
 my head. But it dodges out again like a wire worm through a three 
 pronged fork. Travel — traveller — travellers — what's the common name 
 for the — oh, dear! the what's his name that scrambles about in the 
 hedges. A flower — you know?" 
 
 " Deadly Nightshade?" said Harry. 
 
 " Deadly fiddlestick ! " 
 
 "Bryony?" I suggested. 
 
 " Oh, no ; it begins with C." 
 
 " Clematis?" said Adela. 
 
 " Clematis. Right you are, Adela. And the common name for 
 Clematis is Traveller's Joy. And that's the name for you, Mary, 
 
40 WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT. 
 
 because you're going to serve their senses that travel by hedges and 
 ditches and perhaps have no garden." - 
 
 "Traveller's Joy," said Harry. " Hooray !" 
 
 "Hooray!" said Adela, and she waved the Weeding Woman's 
 bonnet. 
 
 It was a charming name, but it was too good for me, and I said so. 
 
 Arthur jumped on the rockers, and rocked me to stop my talking. 
 When I was far back, he took the point of my chin in his two hands 
 and lifted up my cheeks to be kissed, saying in his very kindest way, 
 " It's not a bit too good for you — it's you all over." 
 
 Then he jumped off as suddenly as he had jumped on, and as 
 I went back with a bounce he cried, " Oh, Mary ! give me back 
 that letter. I must put another postscript and another puzzlewig. 
 P.P.S — Excellent Majesty: Mary will still be our Little Mother on all 
 common occasions, as you wished, but in the Earthly Paradise we call 
 her Traveller's Joy." 
 
41 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HERE are two or three reasons why the part 
 of Traveller's Joy suited me very well. In 
 the ■ first place it required a good deal of 
 trouble, and I like taking trouble. Then 
 John was willing to let me do many things 
 he would not have allowed the others to do, 
 because he could trust me to be careful and 
 to mind what he said. 
 
 On each side of the long walk in the 
 kitchen garden there are flowers between you 
 and the vegetables, herbaceous borders, with 
 nice big clumps of things that have suckers, 
 and off-shoots and seedlings at their feet. 
 
 "The Long Walk's the place to steal 
 from if I wasn't an honest Root-gatherer," 
 said Harry. 
 
 John had lovely poppies there that 
 summer. When I read about the poppies 
 Alphonse Karr sowed in the wild nooks of 
 his native country, it made me think of John's French poppies, and 
 pa^ony poppies, and ranunculus poppies, and carnation poppies, some 
 very large, some quite small, some round and neat, some full and ragged 
 like Japanese chrysanthemums, but all of such beautiful shades of red, 
 rose, crimson, pink, pale blush, and white, that if they had but smelt 
 like carnations instead of smelling like laudanum when you have the 
 toothache, they would have been quite perfect. 
 
 In one way they are nicer than carnations. They have such lots of 
 seed, and it is so easy to get. I asked John to let me have some of the 
 heads. He could not possibly want them all, for each head has enough 
 in it to sow two or three yards of- a border. He said I might have 
 what seeds I liked, if I used scissors, and did not drag things out of 
 the ground by pulling. But I was not to let the young gentlemen go 
 seed gathering. " Boys be so destructive," John said. 
 
42 KINDNESS COMES O WILL. 
 
 After a time, however, I persuaded him to let Harry transplant 
 seedlings of the things that sow themselves and come up in the autumn, 
 if they came up a certain distance from the parent plants. Harry got 
 a lot of things for our Paradise in this way ; indeed he would not have 
 got much otherwise, except wild flowers; and, as he said, "How can I 
 be your Honest Root-gatherer if I mayn't gather anything up by the 
 roots?" 
 
 I can't help laughing sometimes to think of the morning when he 
 left off being our Honest Root-gatherer. He did look so funny, and so 
 like Chris. 
 
 A day or two before, the Scotch Gardener had brought Saxon to 
 see us, and a new kind of mouldiness that had got into his grape vines 
 to show to John. 
 
 He was very cross with Saxon for walking on my garden. (And I 
 am sure I quite forgave him, for I am so fond of him, and he knew no 
 better, poor dear !) But, though he kicked Saxon, the Scotch Gardener 
 was kind to us. He told us that the reason our gardens do not do so 
 well as the big garden, and that my Jules Margottin has not such big 
 roses as John's Jules Margottin is because we have never renewed the 
 soil. 
 
 Arthur and Harry got very much excited about this. They made 
 the Scotch Gardener tell them what good soil ought to be made of, and 
 all the rest of the day they talked of nothing but compost. Indeed 
 Arthur would come into my room and talk about compost after I had 
 gone to bed. 
 
 Father's farming man was always much more good-natured to us 
 ' than John ever was. He would give us anything we wanted. Warm 
 milk when the cows were milked, or sweet pea-sticks, or bran to stuff 
 the dolls' pillows. I've known him take his hedging bill, in his dinner 
 hour, and cut fuel for our beacon-fire, when we were playing at a French 
 Invasion. Nothing could be kinder. 
 
 Perhaps we do not tease him so much as we tease John. But 
 when I say that Arthur says, " Now, Mary, that's just how you explain 
 away things. The real difference between John and Michael is, that 
 Michael is good-natured and John is not. Catch John showing me 
 the duck's nest by the pond, or letting you into the cow-house to kiss 
 the new calf between the eyes — if he were farm man instead of 
 gardener ! " 
 
 And the night Arthur sat in my room, talking about compost, he 
 
COMPOST. 43 
 
 said, " I shall get some good stuff out of Michael, I know ; and Harry 
 and I see our way to road scrapings if we can't get sand ; and we mean 
 to take precious good care John doesn't have all the old leaves to him- 
 self, it's the top spit that puzzles us, and loam is the most important 
 thing of all." 
 
 " What is top spit ? " I asked. 
 
 " It's the earth you get when you dig up squares of grass out of a 
 field like the paddock. The new earth that's just underneath. I expect 
 John got a lot when he turfed that new piece by the pond, but I don't 
 believe he'd spare us a flower-pot full to save his life." 
 
 " Don't quarrel with John, Arthur. It's no good." 
 
 " I won't quarrel with him if he behaves himself," said Arthur, 
 " but we mean to have some top-spit somehow." 
 
 " If you aggravate him he'll only complain of us to Father." 
 
 " I know," said Arthur hotly, " and beastly mean of him, too, when 
 he knows what Father is about this sort of thing." 
 
 " I know it's mean. But what's the good of fighting when you'll 
 only get the worst of it ? " 
 
 "Why to show that you're in the right, and that you know you 
 are," said Arthur. " Good night, Mary. We'll have a compost heap of 
 our own this autumn, mark my words." 
 
 Next day, in spite of my remonstrances, Arthur and Harry came 
 to open war with John, and loudly and long did they rehearse their 
 grievances, when we were out of Father's hearing. 
 
 ' : Have we ever swept our own walks, except that once, long ago, 
 when v the German women came round with threepenny brooms?" 
 asked Arthur, throwing out his right arm, as if he were making a speech. 
 " And think of all the years John has been getting leaf mould for him- 
 self out of our copper beech leaves and now refuses us a barrow load 
 of loam ! " 
 
 The next morning but one Harry was late for breakfast, and 
 then it seemed that he was not dressing ; he had gone out, — very early, 
 one of the servants said. It frightened me, and I went out to look for 
 him. 
 
 When I came upon him in our gardens, it was he who was 
 frightened. 
 
 " Oh, dear," he exclaimed, " I thought you were John." 
 
 I have often seen Harry dirty — very dirty, — but from the mud on 
 his boots to the marks on his face where he had pushed the hair out of 
 
44 TOP SPIT. 
 
 his eyes with earthy fingers, I never saw him quite so grubby before. 
 And if there had been a clean place left in any part of his clothes well 
 away from the ground, that spot must have been soiled by a huge and 
 very dirty sack, under the weight of which his poor little shoulders were 
 bent nearly to his knees. 
 
 " What are you doing, Honest Root-gatherer ? " I asked ; " are 
 you turning yourself into a hump-backed dwarf?" 
 
 "I'm not honest, and I'm not a Root-gatherer just now," said Harry, 
 when he had got breath after setting down his load. He spoke shyly 
 and a little surlily, like Chris when he is in mischief. 
 
 " Harry, what's that ? " 
 . " It's a sack I borrowed from Michael. It won't hurt it, it's had 
 mangel-wurzels in already." 
 
 " What have you got in it now ? It looks dreadfully heavy." 
 
 " It is heavy, I can tell you," said Harry, with one more rub of his 
 dirty fingers over his face. 
 
 " You look half dead. What is it? " 
 
 " It's top spit ; " and Harry began to discharge his load on to the 
 walk. 
 
 " Oh Harry ; where did you get it ? " 
 
 " Out of the paddock. I've been digging up turfs and getting this 
 out, and putting the turfs back, and stamping them down not to show, 
 ever since six o'clock. It was hard work ; and I was so afraid of John 
 coming. Mary, you won't tell tales ? " 
 
 "No, Harry. But I don't think you ought to have taken it without 
 Mother's leave." 
 
 " I don't think you can call it stealing," said Harry. " Fields are 
 a kind of wild places anyhow, and the paddock belongs to Father, and 
 it certainly doesn't belong to John." 
 
 " No," said I, doubtfully. 
 
 " I won't get any more ; it's dreadfully hard work," said Harry, 
 but as he shook the sack out and folded it up, he added (in rather a 
 satisfied tone), " I've got a good deal." 
 
 I helped him to wash himself for breakfast, and half way through 
 he suddenly smiled and said, "John Parkinson will be glad when he 
 sees y on- kn cm* -what, Mary, whatever the other John thinks of it." 
 
 But Harry did not cut any more turfs without leave, for he told me 
 that he had a horrid dream that night of waking up in prison with a 
 warder looking at him through a hole in the door of his cell, and finding 
 
" ' I'm not honest, and I'm not a Root-gatherer just now,' said Harry, 
 shyly and a little surlily, like Chris when he is in mischief."— Page 44. 
 
 He spoke 
 
46 A CONSCIENCE THAT MOULDETH GOBLINS. 
 
 out that he was in penal servitude for stealing top spit from the bottom 
 of the paddock, and Father would not take him out of prison, and that 
 Mother did not know about it. 
 
 However, he and Arthur made a lot of compost. They said we 
 couldn't possibly have a Paradise without it. 
 
 It made them very impatient. We always want the spring and 
 summer and autumn and winter to get along faster than they do. But 
 this year Arthur and Harry were very impatient with summer. 
 
 They were nearly caught one day by Father coming home just as 
 they had got through the gates with Michael's old sack full of road- 
 scrapings, instead of sand (we have not any sand growing near us, and 
 silver sand is rather dear), but we did get leaves together and stacked 
 them to rot into leaf mould. 
 
 Leaf mould is splendid stuff, but it takes a long time for the leaves 
 to get mouldy, and it takes a great many too. Arthur is rather impatient, 
 and he used to say — " I never saw leaves stick on to branches in such a 
 way. I mean to get into some of these old trees and give them a good 
 shaking to remind them what time of year it is. If I don't we shan't 
 have anything like enough leaves for our compost." 
 
47 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OTHER was very much sur- 
 prised by Arthur's letter, but 
 not so much puzzled as he ex- 
 pected. She knew Parkinson's 
 Paradisus quite well, and only 
 wrote to me to ask; "What 
 are the boys after with the 
 old books ? Does your Father 
 know?" 
 
 But when I told her that 
 he had given us leave to be 
 in the library, and that we 
 took great care of the books, 
 and how much we enjoyed 
 the ones about gardening, 
 and all that we were going to do, she was very kind indeed, and 
 promised to put on a blue dress and lace ruffles and be Queen of our 
 Earthly Paradise as soon as she came home. 
 
 When she did come home she was much better, and so was Chris. 
 He was delighted to be our Dwarf, but he wanted to have a hump, and 
 he would have such a big one that it would not keep in its place, and 
 kept slipping under his arm and into all sorts of queer positions. 
 
 Not one of us enjoyed our new game more than Chris did, and he 
 was always teasing me to tell him the story I had told the others, and 
 to read out the names of the flowers which " the real Queen " had in 
 her "real paradise." He made Mother promise to try to get him a bulb 
 of the real Dwarf Daffodil as his next birthday present, to put in his 
 own garden. 
 
 " And I'll give you some compost," said Arthur. " It'll be ever so 
 much better than a stupid book with ' stuff' in it." 
 
48 NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT, 
 
 Chris did seem much stronger. He had colour in his cheeks, and 
 his head did not look so large. But he seemed to puzzle over things in 
 it as much as ever, and he was just as odd and quaint. 
 
 One warm day I had taken the " Tour round my Garden " and was 
 sitting near the bush in the little wood behind our house, when Chris 
 came after me with a Japanese fan in his hand, and sat down cross- 
 legged at my feet. As I was reading, and Mother has taught us not to 
 interrupt people when they are reading, he said nothing, but there he sat. 
 
 " What is it, Chris ? " said I. 
 
 " I am discontented," said Chris. 
 
 " I'm very sorry," said I. 
 
 " I don't think I'm selfish, particularly, but I'm discontented." 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 •'Oh, Mary, I do wish I had not been away when you invented 
 Paradise, then I should have had a name in the game." 
 
 •' You've got a name, Chris. You're the Dwarf." 
 
 "Ah, but what was the Dwarfs name?" 
 
 " I don't know," I admitted. 
 
 " No ; that's just it. I've only one name, and Arthur and Harry 
 have two. Arthur is a Pothecary " (Chris could never be induced to 
 accept Apothecary as one word), "and he's John Parkinson as well. 
 Harry is Honest Root-gather, and he is Francis le Vean. If I'd not 
 been away I should have had two names." 
 
 " You can easily have two names," said I. " We'll call the Dwarf 
 Thomas Brown." 
 
 Chris shook his big head. 
 
 " No, no. That wasn't his name ; I know it wasn't. It's only stuff. 
 I want another name out of the old book." 
 
 I dared not tell him that the dwarf was not in the old book. I 
 said: 
 
 " My dear Chris, you really are discontented ; we can't all have 
 double names. Adela has only one name, she is Weeding Woman and 
 nothing else ; and I have only one name, I'm Traveller's Joy, and that's 
 all." 
 
 "But you and Adela are girls," said Chris, complacently. "The 
 boys have two names." 
 
 I suppressed some resentment, for Christopher's eyes were begin- 
 ning to look weary, and said : 
 
 " Shall I read to you for a bit?" 
 
" One warm day I had taken the ' Tour round my Garden,' and was sitting near the bush in 
 the little wood behind our house, when Chris came after me with a Japanese fan in his hand, and 
 sat down cross-legged at my feet." — Page 48. 
 
 • E 
 
50 MADE GLORIOUS SUMMER. 
 
 "No, don't read. Tell me things out of the old book. Tell m n 
 about the Queen's flowers. Don't tell me about daffodils, they make 
 me think what a long way off my birthday is, and I'm quite discontented 
 enough." 
 
 And Chris sighed, and lay down on the grass, with one arm under 
 his head, and his fan in his hand ; and, as well as I could remember, 
 I told him all about the different varieties of Cowslips, down to the 
 Franticke, or Foolish Cowslip, and he became quite happy. 
 
 Dear Father is rather short sighted, but he can hold a round glass 
 in his eye without cutting himself. It was theother eye which was next 
 to Chris at prayers the following morning ; but he saw his legs, and the 
 servants had hardly got out of the hall before he shouted " Pull up your 
 stockings, Chris !" — and then to Mother, " Why do you keep that sloven 
 of a girl Bessy, if she can't dress the children decently? But I can't 
 conceive what made you put that child into knickerbockers, he can't 
 keep his stockings up." 
 
 " Yes I can," said Christopher, calmly, looking at his legs. 
 
 " Then what have you got 'em down for ? " shouted Father. 
 
 " They're not all down," said Chris, his head still bent over his 
 knees, till I began to fear he would have a fit. 
 
 " One of 'em is, anyhow. I saw it at prayers. Pull it up." 
 
 "Two of them are," said Christopher, never lifting his admiring 
 gaze from his stockings. " Two of them are down, and two of them are 
 up, quite up, quite tidy." 
 
 Dear Father rubbed his glass and put it back into his eye. 
 
 "Why, how many stockings have you got on?" 
 
 "Four," said Chris, smiling serenely at his legs; "and it isn't 
 Bessy's fault. I put 'em all on myself, everyone of them." 
 
 At this minute James brought in the papers, and Father only 
 laughed, and said, "I never saw such a chap," and began to read. He 
 is very fond of Christopher, and Chris is never afraid of him. 
 
 I was going out of the room, and Chris followed me into the hall, 
 and drew my attention to his legs, which were clothed in four stock- 
 ings ; one pair, as he said, being drawn tidily up over his knees, the 
 other pair turned down with some neatness in folds a little above his 
 ankles. 
 
 " Mary," he said, " I'm contented now." 
 
 "I'm very glad, Chris. But do leave off staring at your legs. All 
 the blood will run into your head." 
 
HOSE-IN-HOSE. 5 1 
 
 "I wish things wouldn't always get into my head, and nobody 
 else's," said Chris, peevishly, as he raised it ; but when he looked back 
 at his stockings, they seemed to comfort him again. 
 
 " Mary, I've found another name for myself." 
 
 " Dear Chris ! I'm so glad." 
 
 "It's a real one, out of the old book. I thought of it entirely by 
 -myself." 
 
 " Good Dwarf. What is your name ?" 
 
 " Hbse-m-I/ose," said Christopher, still smiling down upon his 
 legs. 
 
5 2 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LAS for the hose-m-hose ! 
 
 I laughed over Chris- 
 topher and his double 
 stockings, and I danced 
 for joy when Bessy's Aunt 
 told me that she had got 
 me a fine lot of roots of 
 double cowslips. I never 
 guessed what misery I 
 was about to suffer, be- 
 cause of the hose-in-hose. 
 I had almost forgotten 
 that Bessy's Aunt knew 
 double cowslips. After 
 I became Traveller's Joy 
 I was so busy with way- 
 side planting that I had thought less of my own garden than usual, and 
 had allowed Arthur to do what he liked with it as part of the Earthly 
 Paradise (and he was always changing his plans), but Bessy's Aunt had 
 not forgotten about it, which was very good of her. 
 
 The Squire's Weeding Woman is old enough to be Bessy's Aunt, 
 but she has an aunt of her own, who lives seven miles on the other side 
 of the Moor, and the Weeding Woman does not get to see her very 
 often. It is a very out-of-the-way village, and she has to wait for 
 chances of a cart and team coming and going from one of the farms, 
 and so get a lift. 
 
 It was the Weeding Woman's Aunt who sent me the hose-in-hose. 
 The Weeding Woman told me — "Aunt be mortal fond of her 
 flowers, but she've no notions of gardening, not in the ways of a 
 gentleman's garden. But she be after 'em all along, so well as the 
 roomatiz in her back do let her, with an old shovel and a bit of stuff to 
 keep the frost out, one time, and the old shovel and a bit of stuff to 
 
THE VERY FLOWERS ARE SACRED TO THE POOR. 53 
 
 keep 'em moistened from the drought, another time ; cuddling of 'em 
 like Christians. Ee zee, Miss, Aunt be advanced in years ; her family 
 be off her mind, zum married, zum buried ; and it zim as if her flowers 
 be like new childern for her, spoilt childern, too, as I zay, and most fuss 
 about they that be least worth it, zickly uns and contrairy uns, as 
 parents will. Many's time I do say to she — ' Th' old Zquire's garden, 
 now, 'twould zim strange to thee, sartinly 'twould ! How would 
 'ee feel to see Gardener zowing's spring plants by the hunderd, and 
 a-throwing of 'em away by the score when beds be vull, and turning 
 of un out for bedding plants, and throwing they away when he'eve 
 made his cuttings ? ' And she 'low she couldn't abear it, no more'n 
 see Herod a mass-sakering of the Innocents. But if 'ee come to Bible, 
 I do say Aunt put me in mind of the par'ble of the talents, she do, for 
 what you give her she make ten of, while other folks be losing what 
 they got. And 'tis well too, for if 'twas not for givin' of un away, 
 seeing's she lose nothin', and can't abear to des,try nothin', and never 
 takes un up but to set un again, six in place of one, as I say, with such 
 a mossel of a garden, ' Aunt, where would you be ? ' And she 'low she 
 can't tell, but the Lard would provide. ' Thank He,' I says, ' you be so 
 out o' way, and 'ee back so bad, and past travelling, zo there be no 
 chance of 'ee ever seein' Old Zquire's Gardener's houses and they stove 
 plants ;' for if Gardener give un a pot, sure's death her'd set it in the 
 chimbly nook on frosty nights, and put bed-quilt over un, and any cold 
 corner would do for she." 
 
 At this point the Weeding Woman became short of breath, and I 
 managed to protest against taking so many plants of the hose-in-hose. 
 
 " Take un and welcome, my dear, take un and welcome," replied 
 Bessy's Aunt. " I did say to Aunt to keep two or dree, but 'One be aal 
 I want,' her says, ' I'll have so many agin in a few years, dividin' of un 
 in autumn,' her says. 'Thee've one foot in grave Aunt,' says I, 'it don't 
 altogether become 'ee to forecast autumns,' I says, 'when next may be 
 your latter end, 's like as not' ' Niece,' her says, 'I be no ways pre- 
 suming. His will be done,' her says, 'but if I'm. spared I'll rear 
 un, and if I'm took, 'twill be where I sha'n't want un. Zo let young 
 lady have un,' her says. And there a be ! " 
 
 When I first saw the nice little plants, I did think of my own 
 garden, but not for long. My next and final thought was — "Mary's 
 Meadow ! " 
 
 Since I became Traveller's Joy, I had chiefly been busy in the 
 
54 SWEET WAGGING COWSLIPS, THEY BEND AND THEY BOW. 
 
 hedge-rows by the high-roads, and in waste places, like the old quarry, 
 and very bare and trampled bits, where there seemed to be no flowers 
 at all. 
 
 You cannot say that of Mary's Meadow. Not to be a garden, it is 
 one of the most flowery places I know. I did once begin a list of all 
 that grows in it, but it was in one of Arthur's old exercise books, which 
 he had " thrown in," in a bargain we had, and there were very few blank 
 pages left. I had thought a couple of pages would be more than 
 enough, so I began with rather' full accounts of the flowers, but I used 
 up the book long before I had written out one-half of what blossoms 
 in Mary's Meadow. 
 
 Wild roses, and white bramble, and hawthorn, and dogwood, with 
 its curious red flowers ; and nuts, and maple, and privet, and all sorts 
 of bushes in the hedge, far more than one would think ; and ferns, and 
 the stinking iris, which has such splendid berries, in the ditch — the 
 ditch on the lower side where it is damp, and where I meant to sow 
 forget-me-nots, like Alphonse Karr, for there are none there as it 
 happens. On the other side, at the top of the field, it is dry, and blue 
 succory grows, and grows out on the road beyond. The most beautiful 
 blue possible, but so hard to pick. And there are Lent lilies, and lords 
 and ladies, and ground ivy, which smells herby when you find it, trailing 
 about and turning the colour of Mother's ." aurora " wool in green 
 winters ; and sweet white violets, and blue dog violets, and primroses, 
 of course, and two or three kinds of orchis, and all over the field cow- 
 slips, cowslips, cowslips— to please the nightingale. 
 
 And I wondered if the nightingale would find out the hose-in-hose, 
 when I had planted six of them in the sunniest, cosiest corner of Mary's 
 Meadow. 
 
 For this was what I resolved to do, though I kept my resolve to 
 myself, for which I was afterwards very glad. I did not tell the others 
 because I thought that Arthur might want some of the plants for our 
 Earthly Paradise, and I wanted to put them all in Mary's Meadow. I 
 said to myself, like Bessy's great-aunt, that " if I was spared " I would 
 go next year and divide the roots of the six, and bring some off-sets to 
 our gardens, but I would keep none back now. The nightingale should 
 have them all. 
 
 We had been busy in our gardens, and in the roads and bye-lanes, 
 and I had not been in Mary's Meadow for a long time before the after- 
 noon when I put my little trowel, and a bottle of water, and the six 
 
PASSIONATE MEN, LIKE. FLEET HOUNDS, 55 
 
 hose-in-hose into a basket, and was glad to get off quietly and alone to 
 plant them. The highways and hedges were very dusty, but there it was 
 very green. The nightingale had long been silent, I do not know where 
 he was, but the rooks were not at all silent ; they had been holding a 
 parliament at the upper end of the field this morning, and were now 
 all talking at once, and flapping about the tops of the big elms which 
 were turning bright yellow, whilst down below a flight of starlings had 
 taken their place, and sat in the prettiest circles ; and groups of hedge- 
 sparrows flew and mimicked them. And in the fields round about the 
 sheep baaed, and the air, which was very sweet, was so quiet that these 
 country noises were the only sounds to be heard, and they could be 
 heard from very far away. 
 
 I had found the exact spot I wanted, and had planted four of the 
 hose-in-hose, and watered them from the bottle, and had the fifth in 
 my hand, and the sixth still in the basket, when all these nice noises 
 were drowned by a loud harsh shout which made me start, and sent the 
 flight of starlings into the next field, and made the hedge-sparrows jump 
 into the hedge. 
 
 And when I looked up I saw the Old Squire coming towards me, 
 and storming and shaking his fist at me as he came. But with the other 
 hand he held Saxon by the collar, who was struggling to get away from 
 him and to go to me. 
 
 I had so entirely forgotten about Father's quarrel with the Squire, 
 that when the sight of the old gentleman in a rage suddenly reminded 
 me, I was greatly stupefied and confused, and really did not at first hear 
 what he said. But when I understood that he was accusing me of 
 digging cowslips out of his field, I said at once (and pretty loud, for he 
 was deaf) that I was not digging up anything, but was plantin~ double 
 cowslips to grow up and spread amongst the Common ones. 
 
 I suppose it did sound rather unlikely, as the Old Squire knew 
 nothing about our game, but a thing being unlikely is no reason for 
 calling truthful people liars, and that was what the Old Squire called 
 me. , , 
 
 It choked me, and when he said I was shameless, and that he had 
 caught me with the plants upon me, and yelled to me to empty my 
 basket, I threw away the fifth and sixth hose-in-hose as if they had been 
 adders, but I could not speak again. He must have been beside himself 
 with rage, for he called me all sort of names, and said I was my father's 
 own child, a liar and a thief. Whilst he was talking about sending me 
 
" I saw the Old Squire coming towards me, and storming and shaking his fist at me as he 
 came. But with the other hand he held Saxon by the collar, who was struggling to get away from 
 him and to go to me." — Page 55. 
 
ARE APT TO OVER-RUN THE SCENT. 57 
 
 to prison (and I thought of- Harry's dream, and turned cold with fear), 
 Saxon was tugging to get to me, arid at last he got away and came 
 rushing up. 
 
 Now I knew that the Old Squire was holding Saxon back because 
 he thought Saxon wanted to worry me as a trespasser, but I don't know 
 whether he let Saxon go at last, because he thought I deserved to be 
 worried, or whether Saxon got away of himself. When his paws were 
 almost on me the Old Squire left off abusing me, and yelled to the 
 dog, who at last, very unwillingly, went back to him, but when he just 
 got to the Squire's feet he stopped, and pawed the ground in the funny 
 way he sometimes does, and looked up at his master as much as to say, 
 " You see it's only play," and then turned round and raced back to me 
 as hard as he could lay legs to ground. This time he reached me, and 
 jumped to lick my face, and I threw my arms round his neck and burst 
 into tears. 
 
 When you are crying and kissing at the same time, you cannot hear 
 anything else, so what more the Old Squire said I do not know. 
 
 I picked up my basket and trowel at once, and fled homewards as 
 fast as I could go, which was not very fast, so breathless was I with tears 
 and shame and fright. 
 
 When I was safe in our grounds I paused and looked back. The 
 Old Squire was still there, shouting and gesticulating, and Saxon was at 
 his heels, and over the hedge two cows were looking at him ; but the 
 rooks and the starlings were far off. in distant trees and fields. 
 
 And I sobbed afresh when I remembered that I had been called a 
 liar and a thief, and had lost every one of my hose-in-hose ; and this 
 was all that had come of trying to make an Earthly Paradise of Mary's 
 Meadow, and of taking upon myself the name of Traveller's Joy. 
 
5« 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 TOLD no one. It was bad enough to think of by 
 myself. I could not have talked about it. But every 
 day I expected that the Old Squire would send a 
 letter or a policeman, or come himself, and rage and 
 storm, and tell Father. 
 
 He never did ; and no one seemed to suspect 
 that anything had gone wrong, except that Mother 
 fidgetted because I looked ill, and would show me 
 to Dr. Solomon. It is a good thing doctors tell you 
 what they think is the matter, and don't ask you what 
 you think, for I could not have told him about the 
 Squire. He said I was below par, and that it was 
 our abominable English climate, and he sent me a 
 bottle of tonic. And when I had taken half the 
 bottle, and had begun to leave off watching for the 
 policeman, I looked quite well again. So I took the 
 rest, not to waste it, and thought myself very lucky. 
 My only fear now was that Bessy's aunt might ask 
 after the hose-in-hose. But she never did. 
 
 I had one more fright, where I least expected it 
 It had never occurred to me that Lady Catherine 
 would take an interest in our game, and want to know 
 what we had done, and what we were doing, and 
 going to do, or I should have been far more afraid 
 Bessy's aunt. For the Weeding Woman has a good 
 deal of delicacy, and often begs pardon for taking liberties ; but if 
 Aunt Catherine takes an interest, and wants to know, she asks one 
 question after another, and does not think whether you like to answer 
 or not. 
 
 She took an interest in our game after one of Christopher's 
 luncheons with her. 
 
 She often asks Chris to go there to luncheon, all by- himself 
 
 what we were 
 of her than of 
 
HEARTS MAY AGREE, THOUGH HEADS DIFFER. 59 
 
 Father is not very fond of his going, chiefly, I fancy, because he is so 
 fond of Chris, and misses him. Sometimes, in the middle of luncheon, 
 he looks at Christopher's empty place, and says, " I wonder what those 
 two are talking about over their pudding. They are the queerest pair 
 of friends." If we ask Chris, what they have talked about, he wags his 
 head, and looks very well pleased with himself, and says, "Lots of 
 things. I tell her things, and she tells me things." And that is all we 
 can get out of him. 
 
 A few weeks afterwards, after I lost the hose-in-hose, Chris went to 
 have luncheon with Aunt Catherine, and he came back rather later than 
 usual. 
 
 " You must have been telling each other a good deal to-day, Chris-," 
 I said. 
 
 " I told her lots," said Chris, complacently. " She didn't tell me 
 nothing, hardly. But I told her lots. My apple fritter got cold whilst 
 I was telling it. She sent it away, and had two hot ones, new, on 
 purpose for me." 
 
 "What did you tell her?" 
 
 " I told her your story ; she liked it very much. And I told her 
 Daffodils, and about my birthday ; and I told her Cowslips — all of 
 them. Oh, I told her lots. She didn't tell me nothing." 
 
 A few days later, Aunt Catherine asked us to tea — all of us — me, 
 Arthur, Adela, Harry, and Chris. And she asked us all about our game, 
 When Harry said, " I dig up, but Mary plants — not in our garden, but 
 in wild places, and woods, and hedges, and fields," Lady Catherine blew 
 her nose very loud, and said, "I should think you don't do much 
 digging and planting in that field your Father went to law about ? " and 
 my teeth chattered so with fright that I think Lady Catherine would have 
 heard them if she hadn't been blowing her nose. But, luckily for me, 
 Arthur said, "Oh, we never go near Mary's Meadow now, we're so busy." 
 And then Aunt Catherine asked what made us think of my name, and 
 I repeated most of the bit from Alphonse Karr, for I knew it by heart 
 now ; and Arthur repeated what John Parkinson says about the " Honi- 
 suckle that groweth wild in every hedge," and how he left it there, " to 
 serve their senses that travel by it, or have no garden ; " and then he 
 said, " So Mary is called Traveller's Joy, because she plants flowers in 
 the hedges, to serve their senses that travel by them." 
 
 "And who serves them that have no garden?." asked Aunt 
 Catherine, sticking her gold glasses over her nose, and looking at us.- 
 
60 FIND OUT MEN'S WANTS AND WILL, 
 
 " None of us do," said Arthur, after thinking for a minute. 
 
 " Humph ! " said Aunt Catherine. 
 
 Next time Chris was asked to luncheon, I was asked too. Father 
 laughed at me, and teased me, but I went. 
 
 I was very much amused by the airs which Chris gave himself at 
 table. He was perfectly well behaved, but, in his quiet old-fashioned 
 way, he certainly gave himself airs. We have only one man indoors — 
 James ; but Aunt Catherine has three — a butler, a footman, and a 
 second footman. The second footman kept near Christopher, who sat 
 opposite Aunt Catherine, (she made me sit on one side), and seemed 
 to watch to attend upon him ; but if Christopher did want anything, he 
 always ignored this man, and asked the butler for it, and called him by 
 his name. 
 
 After a bit, Aunt Catherine began to talk about the game again. ■ 
 
 " Have you got anyone to serve them that have no garden, yet ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 Christopher shook his head, and said " No." 
 
 " Humph," said Aunt Catherine ; " better take me into the game." 
 
 " Could you be of any use ? " asked Christopher. " Toast and 
 water, Chambers." 
 
 The butler nodded, as majestically as Chris himself, to the second 
 footman, who flew to replenish the silver mug, which had been Lady 
 Catherine's when she was a little girl. When Christopher had drained 
 it (he is a very thirsty boy), he repeated the question. 
 
 " Do you think you could be of any use ? " 
 
 Mr. Chambers, the butler, never seems to hear anything that people 
 say, except when they ask for something to eat or drink ; and he does 
 not often hear that, because he watches to see what you want, and gives 
 it of himself, or sends it by the footman. He looks just as if he was 
 having his photograph taken, staring at a point on the wall and thinking 
 of nothing ; but when Christopher repeated his question I saw Chambers 
 frown. I believe he thinks Christopher presumes on Lady Catherine's 
 kindness, and does not approve of it. 
 
 It is quite the other way with Aunt Catherine. Just when you 
 would think she must turn angry, and scold Chris for being rude, she 
 only begins to laugh, and shakes like a jelly (she is very stout) and 
 encourages him. She said, 
 
 "Take care all that toast and water doesn't get into your head, 
 Chris." 
 
AND MEET THEM THERE. 6 1 
 
 She said that to vex him, because, ever since he heard that he had 
 water on the brain, Chris is very easily affronted about his head. He 
 was affronted now, and began to eat his bread-and-butter pudding in 
 silence, Lady Catherine still shaking and laughing. Then she wiped 
 her eyes, and said, 
 
 " Never mind, old man, I'm going to tell you something. Put the 
 sugar and cream on the table, Chambers, and you needn't wait." 
 
 The men went out very quietly, and Aunt Catherine went on : 
 
 " Where do you think I was yesterday ? In the new barracks — a 
 place I set my face against ever since they began to build it, and spoil 
 one of my best peeps from the Rhododendron Walk. I went to see a 
 young cousin of mine, who was fool enough to marry a poor officer, 
 and have a lot of little boys and girls, no handsomer than you, Chris." 
 
 " Are they as handsome ? " said Chris, who had recovered himself, 
 and was selecting currants from his pudding, and laying them aside for 
 a final bonne bouche. 
 
 " Humph ! Perhaps not. But they eat so much pudding, and wear 
 out so many boots, that they are all too poor to live anywhere except in 
 barracks." ; . • 
 
 Christopher laid down his spoon, and looked as he always looks 
 when lie is hearing a sad story. 
 
 "Is barracks like the workhouse, Aunt Catherine ? " he asked. 
 
 "A good deal like the workhouse," said Aunt Catherine. Then 
 she went on — " I told her Mother I could not begin calling at the 
 barracks. There are some very low streets close by, and my coachman 
 said he couldn't answer for his horses with bugles, and perhaps guns, 
 going off when you least expect them. I told her I would ask them to 
 dinner ; . and I did, but they were engaged. Well, yesterday I changed 
 my mind, and I told Harness that I meant to go to the barracks, and 
 the horses would have to take me. So we started. When we were 
 going along the upper road, between the high hedges, what do you 
 think I saw?" 
 
 Chris had been going on with his pudding again, but he paused to 
 make a guess. 
 
 " A large cannon, just going off? " 
 
 " No. If I'd seen that, you wouldn't have seen any more of me. 
 I saw masses of wild clematis scrambling everywhere, so that the hedge 
 looked as if somebody had been dressing it up in tufts of feathers." 
 
 As she said this, Lady Catherine held out her hand to me across 
 
62 ALL WORLDLY JOYES GO LESSE 
 
 the table very kindly. She has a fat hand, covered with rings, and I 
 put my hand into it. 
 
 " And what do you think came into my head ? " she asked. 
 
 " Toast and water," said Chris, maliciously. 
 
 " No, you monkey. I began to think of hedge-flowers, and 
 travellers, and Traveller's Joy." 
 
 Aunt Catherine shook my hand here, and dropped it. 
 
 " And you thought how nice it was for the poor travellers to have 
 such nice flowers," said Chris, smiling, and wagging his head up and 
 down. 
 
 " Nothing of the kind," said Aunt Catherine, brusquely. " I 
 thought what lots of flowers the travellers had already, without Mary 
 planting any more ; and I thought not one traveller in a dozen paid 
 much attention to them — begging John Parkinson's pardon — and how 
 much more in want of flowers people " that have no garden " are ; and 
 then I thought of that poor girl in those bare barracks, whose old home 
 was one of the prettiest places, with the loveliest garden, in all Berk- 
 shire." 
 
 "Was it an Earthly Paradise? " asked Chris. 
 
 " It was, indeed. Well, when I thought of her inside those brick 
 walls, looking out on one of those yards they march about in, now 
 they've cut down all the trees, and planted sentry boxes, I put my best 
 bonnet out of the window, which always spoils the feather, and told 
 Harness to turn his horses' heads, and drive home again." 
 
 " What for? " said Chris, as brusquely as Lady Catherine. 
 
 " I sent for Hobbs." 
 
 " Hobbs the Gardener? " said Chris. 
 
 " Hobbs the Gardener ; and I told Chambers to give him the 
 basket from the second peg, and then Isent him into the conservatory 
 to fill it. Mary, my dear, I am very particular about my baskets. If 
 ever I lend you my diamonds, and you lose them, I may forgive you — 
 I shall know that was an accident ; but if I lend you a basket, and you 
 don't return it, don't look me in the face again. I always write my name 
 on them, so there's no excuse. And I don't know a greater piece of 
 impudence — and people are wonderfully impudent now-a-days — than to 
 think that because a thing only cost fourpence, you need not be at the 
 trouble of keeping it clean and dry, and of sending it back." 
 
 "■Some more toast and water please," said Chris. 
 
 Aunt Catherine helped him, and continued — "Hobbs is a careful 
 
TO THE ONE JOY OF DOING KINDNESSES. 63 
 
 man — he has been with me ten years — he doesn't cut flowers recklessly 
 as a rule, but when I saw that basket I said, ' Hobbs, you've been very 
 extravagant' He looked ashamed of himself, but he said, ' I under- 
 stood they was for Miss Kitty, m'm. She's been used to nice gardens, 
 m'm.' Hobbs lived with them in Berkshire before he came to me." 
 
 "It was very nice of Hobbs," said Chris, emphatically. 
 
 " Humph ! " said Aunt Catherine, " the flowers were mine." 
 
 " Did you ever get to the barracks ? " asked Chris, " and what was 
 they like when you did ? " 
 
 "They were about as unlike Kitty's old home as anything could 
 well be. She has made her rooms pretty enough, but it was easy to see 
 she is hard up for flowers. She's got an old rose-coloured Sevres 
 bowl that was my Grandmother's, and there it was, filled with bramble 
 leaves and Traveller's Joy (which she calls Old Man's Beard ; Kitty 
 always would differ from her elders ! ) and a soup-plate full of forget- 
 me-nots. She said two of the children had half-drowned themselves, 
 and lost a good straw hat in getting them for her. Just like their 
 mother, as I told her." 
 
 " What did she say when you brought out the basket ? " asked 
 Chris, disposing of. his reserve of currants at one mouthful, and laying 
 down his spoon. 
 
 " She said, ' Oh ! oh ! oh ! ' till 1 told her to say something more 
 amusing, and then she said, ' I could cry for joy ! ' and, 'Tell Hobbs he 
 remembers all my favourites." 
 
 Christopher here bent his head over his empty plate, and said grace 
 (Chris is very particular about his grace), and then got down from his 
 chair and went up to Lady Catherine, and threw his arms round her as 
 far as they would go, saying, " You are good. And I love you. I 
 should think she thinked you was a fairy godmother." 
 
 After they had hugged each other, Aunt Catherine said, " Will you 
 take me into the game, if I serve them that have no garden ? " 
 
 Chris and I said " Yes " with one voice. 
 
 " Then come into the drawing-room," said Aunt Catherine, getting 
 up and giving a hand to each of us. "And Chris shall give me, a 
 name." 
 
 Chris pondered a long time on this subject, and seemed a good 
 deal disturbed in his mind. Presently he said, " I won't be selfish. You 
 shall have it." 
 
 " Shall have what, you oddity ? " 
 
64 NONSUCH. 
 
 " I'm not a oddity, and I'm going to give you the name I invented 
 for myself. But you'll have to wear four stockings, two up and two 
 down." 
 
 " Then you may keep that name to yourself," said Aunt Catherine. 
 
 Christopher looked relieved. 
 
 " Perhaps you'd not like to be called Old Man's Beard ? " 
 
 " Certainly not ! " said Aunt Catherine. 
 
 " It is more of a boy's name," said Chris. " You might be the 
 Franticke or Foolish Cowslip, but it is Jack an Apes on Horseback too, 
 and that's a boy's name. You shall be a Daffodil, not a dwarf daffodil, 
 but a big one, because you are big. Wait a minute — I know which you 
 shall be. You shall be Nonsuch. It's a very big one, and it means 
 none like it. So you shall be Nonsuch, for there's no one like you." 
 
 On which Christopher and Lady Catherine hugged each other 
 afresh. 
 
 "Who told most to-day?" asked Father when we got home. 
 " Oh, Aunt Catherine. Much most," said Christopher. 
 
65 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 HE height of our game was in 
 Autumn. It is such a good 
 time for digging up, and 
 planting, and dividing, -and 
 making cuttings, and gather- 
 ing seeds, and sowing them 
 too. But it went by very 
 quickly, and when the leaves 
 began to fall they fell very 
 quickly, and Arthur never had 
 to go up the trees and shake 
 them. 
 
 After the first hard frost 
 we quite gave up playing at 
 the Earthly Paradise; first, because there was nothing we could do, and, 
 secondly, because a lot of snow fell, and Arthur had a grand idea of 
 making snow statues all along the terrace, so that Mother could see 
 them from the drawing-room windows. We worked very hard, and it 
 was very difficult to manage legs without breaking ; so we made most 
 of them Romans in togas, and they looked very well from a distance, 
 and lasted a long time, because the frost lasted. , , 
 
 And, by degrees, I almost forgot that terrible afternoon in Mary's 
 Meadow. Only when Saxon came to see us I told him that I was 
 very glad that no one understood his bark, so that he could not let put 
 what had become of the hose-in-hose. 
 
 But when the winter was past, and the snowdrops came out in the 
 shrubbery, and there were catkins on the nut trees, and the missel- 
 thrush we had been feeding in the frost sat out on mild days and sang 
 to us, we all of us began to think of our gardens again, and to go 
 poking about " with our noses in the borders," as Arthur said, " as if we 
 were dogs snuffing after truffles." What we really were "snuffing after." 
 
 F 
 
66 SUPPOSINGS. 
 
 were the plants we had planted in autumn, and which were poking and 
 sprouting, and coming up in all directions. 
 
 Arthur and Harry did real gardening in the Easter holidays, and 
 they captured Adela now and then, and made her weed. But Chris- 
 topher's delight was to go with me to the waste places and hedges, 
 where I had planted things as Traveller's Joy, and to get me to show 
 them to him where they had begun to make a spring start, and to help 
 him to make up rambling stories, which he called " Supposings," of 
 what the flowers would be like, and what this or that traveller would 
 say when he saw them. One of his favourite supposings was — " Sup- 
 posing a very poor man was coming along the road, with his dinner in 
 a handkerchief; and supposing he sat down under the hedge to eat it; 
 and supposing it was cold beef, and he had no mustard ; and supposing 
 there was a seed on your nasturtium plants, and he knew it wouldn't 
 poison him ; and supposing he ate it with his beef, and it tasted nice 
 and hot, like a pickle, wouldn't he wonder how it got there?" 
 
 But when the primroses had been out a long time, and the cowslips 
 were coming into bloom, to my horror Christopher began " supposing " 
 that we should find hose-in-hose in some of the fields, and all my efforts 
 to put this idea out of his head, and to divert him from the search, were 
 utterly in vain. 
 
 Whether it had anything to do with his having had water on the 
 brain I do not know, but when once an idea got into Christopher's 
 head there was no dislodging it He now talked of hose-in-hose con- 
 stantly. One day he announced that he was " discontented " once 
 more, and should remain so till he had " found a hose-in-hose." I 
 enticed him to a field where I knew it was possible to secure an occa- 
 sional oxlip, but he only looked pale, shook his head distressingly, and 
 said, " I don't think nothin' of Oxlips." Coloured primroses would not 
 comfort him. He professed to disbelieve in the time-honoured prescrip- 
 tion, " Plant a primrose upside down, and it will come up a polyanthus," 
 and refused to help me to make the experiment At last the worst 
 came. He suddenly spoke, with smiles — "I know where we'll find 
 hose-in-hose! In Mary's Meadow. It's the fullest field of cowslips 
 there is. Hurrah ! Supposing we find hose-in-hose, and supposing we 
 find green cowslips, and supposing we fine curled cowslips or galli- 
 gaskins, and supposing " 
 
 But I could not bear it. I fairly ran away from him, and shut 
 myself up in my room and cried. I knew it was silly, and yet I could 
 
PRETENDINGS.. ©7 
 
 not bear the thought of having to satisfy everybody's curiosity, and 
 describe that scene in Mary's Meadow, which had wounded me so 
 bitterly, and explain why I had not told of it before. 
 
 I cried, too, for another reason. Mary's Meadow had been dear to 
 us all, ever since I could remember. It was always our favourite field. 
 We had coaxed our nurses there, when we could induce them to leave 
 the high road, or when, luckily for us, on account of an epidemic, or 
 for some reason or another, they were forbidden to go gossiping into 
 the town. We had " pretended " fairies in the nooks of the delightfully 
 neglected hedges, and we had found fairy-rings to prove our pretendings 
 true. We went there for flowers ; we went there for mushrooms and 
 puff-balls ; we went there to hear the nightingale. What cowslip balls, 
 and what cowslip tea-parties it had afforded us. It is fair to the Old 
 Squire to say that we were sad trespassers, before he and Father 
 quarrelled and went to law. For Mary's Meadow was a field with every 
 quality to recommend it to childish affections." 
 
 And now I was banished from it, not only by the quarrel, of which 
 we had really not heard much, or realised it as fully, but by my own 
 bitter memories. I cried afresh to think I should never go again to the 
 corner where I always found the earliest violets ; and then I cried to 
 think that the nightingale would soon be back, and how that very 
 morning, when I opened my window, I had heard the cuckoo, and 
 could tell that he was calling from just about Mary's Meadow. 
 
 I cried my eyes into such a state, that I was obliged to turn my 
 attention to making them fit to be seen ; and I had spent quite half an 
 hour in bathing them and breathing on my handkerchief, and dabbing 
 them, which is more soothing, when I heard Mother calling me. I 
 winked hard, drew a few long breaths, rubbed my cheeks, which were 
 so white they showed up my red eyes, and ran down-stairs. Mother 
 was coming to meet me. She said — " Where is Christopher ? " 
 
 It startled me. I said, "He was with me in the garden, about — 
 oh, about an hour ago ; have you lost him ? I'll go and look for him." 
 
 And I snatched up a garden hat, which shaded my swollen eyelids, 
 and ran out. I could not find him anywhere, and becoming frightened, 
 I ran down the drive, calling him as I went, and through the gate, and 
 out into the road. 
 
 A few yards farther on I met him. ' 
 
 That child is most extraordinary. One minute he looks like a 
 ghost ; an hour later his face is beaming with a radiance that seems 
 
68 REALITIES. 
 
 absolutely to fatten him under your eyes. That was how he looked 
 just then as he came towards me, smiling in an effulgent sort of way, as 
 if he were the noonday sun — no less, and carrying a small nosegay in 
 his hand. 
 
 When he came within hearing he boasted, as if he had been Ctesar 
 himself. 
 
 " I went ; I found it. I've got them." 
 
 And as he held his hand up, and waved the nosegay — I knew all. 
 He had been to Mary's Meadow, and the flowers between his fingers 
 were hose-in-hose. 
 
6 9 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WON'T be selfish, Mary," Christo- 
 pher said. "You invented the game, 
 and you told me about them. You 
 shall have them in water on your 
 dressing-table ; they might get lost 
 in the nursery. Bessy is always 
 throwing things out. To-morrow I 
 shall go and look for galligaskins." 
 
 I was too glad to keep them 
 from Bessy's observation, as well as 
 her unparalleled powers of destruc- 
 tion, which I knew well. I put 
 them into a slim glass on my table, 
 and looked stupidly at them, and 
 then out of the window at Mary's 
 Meadow. 
 
 So they had lived — and grown 
 — and settled there — and were now 
 in bloom. My plants. 
 
 Next morning I was sitting 
 
 drawing, in the schoolroom window, 
 
 when I saw the Old Squire coming 
 
 up the drive. There is no mistaking him when you can see him at all. 
 
 He is a big, handsome old man. with white whiskers, and a white hat, 
 
 and white gaiters, and he generally wears a light coat, and a flower in 
 
 his button-hole. The flower he wore this morning looked like , but 
 
 I was angry with myself for thinking of it, and went on drawing again, 
 as well as I could, for I could not help wondering why he was coming 
 to our house. Then it struck me he might have seen Chris trespassing, 
 and he might be coming at last to lay a formal complaint. 
 
 Twenty minutes later James came to tell me that Father wished to 
 see me in the library, and when I got there, Father was just settling his 
 
70 PARDONS AND PLEASANTNESS 
 
 eye-glass in his eye, and the Old Squire was standing on the hearthrug, 
 with a big piece of paper in his hand. And then I saw that I was 
 right, and that the flowers in his button-hole were hose-in-hose. 
 
 As I came in he laid down the paper, took the hose-in-hose out of 
 his button-hole in his left hand, and held out his right hand to me, 
 saying : " I'm more accustomed to public speaking than to private 
 speaking, Miss Mary. But ■ will you be friends with me?" 
 
 In Mary's Meadow my head had got all confused, because I was 
 frightened. I was not frightened to-day, and I saw the whole matter 
 in a moment. He had found the double cowslips, and he knew 
 now that I was neither a liar nor a thief. I was glad, but I could 
 not feel very friendly to him. I said, "You can speak when you are 
 angry." 
 
 Though he was behind me, I could feel Father coming nearer, and 
 I knew somehow that he had taken out his glass again to rub it and put 
 it back, as he does when he is rather surprised or amused. I was afraid 
 he meant to laugh at me afterwards, and he can tease terribly, but I 
 could not have helped saying what came into my head that morning if 
 I had tried. When you have suffered a great deal about anything, you 
 cannot sham, not even politeness. 
 
 The Old Squire got rather red. Then he said, " I am afraid I am 
 very hasty, my dear, and say very unjustifiable things. But I am very 
 sorry, and I beg your pardon. Will you forgive me ? " 
 
 I said, " Of course, if you're sorry, I forgive you, but you have 
 been a very long time in repenting." 
 
 Which was true. If I had been cross with one of the others, and 
 had borne malice for five months, I should have thought myself very 
 wicked. But when I had said it, I felt sorry, for the old gentleman 
 made no answer. Father did not speak either, and I began to feel very 
 miserable. I touched the flowers, and the Old Squire gave them to 
 me in silence. I thanked him very much, and then I said — 
 
 " I am very glad you know about it now. . . . I'm very glad 
 they lived. ... I hope you like them ? . . . I hope, if you 
 do like them, that they'll grow and spread all over your field." 
 
 The Old Squire spoke at last. He said, "It is not my field any 
 longer." 
 
 I said, "Oh, why?" 
 
 " I have given it away ; I have been a long time in repenting, but 
 when I did repent I punished myself. I have given it away." 
 
ARE GREAT REVENGES OF SLANDERS. 7 1 
 
 It overwhelmed me, and when he took up the big paper again, I 
 thought he was going, and I tried to stop him, for I was sorry I had 
 spoken unkindly to him, and I wanted to be friends. 
 
 " Please don't go," I said. " Please stop and be friends. And oh, 
 please, please don't give Mary's Meadow away. You mustn't punish 
 yourself. There's nothing to punish yourself for. I forgive you with 
 all my heart, and I'm sorry I spoke crossly. I have been so very 
 miserable, and I was so vexed at wasting the hose-in-hose, because 
 Bessy's great aunt gave them to me, and I've none left. Oh, the 
 unkindest thing you could do to me now would be to give away Mary's 
 Meadow." 
 
 The Old Squire had taken both my hands in his, and now he asked 
 very kindly — "Why, my dear, why don't you want me to give away 
 Mary's Meadow ? " 
 
 "Because we are so fond of it. And because I was beginning to 
 hope that now we're friends, and you know we don't want to steal your 
 things, or to hurt your field, perhaps you would let us play in it some- 
 times, and perhaps have Saxon to play with us there. We are sc very 
 fond of him too." 
 
 " You are fond of Mary's Meadow ? " said the Old Squire. 
 
 " Yes, yes ! We have been fond of it all our lives. We don't 
 think there is any field like it, and I don't believe there can be. Don't 
 give it away. You'll never get one with such flowers in it again. And 
 now there are hose-in-hose, and they are not at all common. Bessy's 
 aunts' aunt has only got one left, and she's taking care of it with a 
 shovel. And if you'll let us in we'll plant a lot of things, and do no 
 harm, we will indeed. And the nightingale will be here directly. Oh, 
 don't give it away ! " 
 
 My head was whirling now with the difficulty of persuading him, 
 and I did not hear what he said across me to my father. But I heard 
 Father's reply — " Tell her yourself, sir." 
 
 On which the Old Squire stuffed the big paper into my arms, and 
 put his hand on my head and patted it 
 
 " I told you I was a bad hand at talking, my dear," he said, " but 
 Mary's Meadow is given away, and that's the Deed of Gift which you've 
 got in your arms, drawn up as tight as any rascal of a lawyer can do it, 
 and that's not so tight, I believe, but what some other rascal of a lawyer 
 could undo it However, they may let you alone. For I've given it to 
 you, my dear, and it is yours. So you can plant, and play, and do what 
 
72 
 
 HER VERY OWN. 
 
 you please there. ' You, and your heirs and assigns, for ever,' as the 
 rascals say." 
 
 It was my turn now to be speechless. But as I stared blankly in 
 front of me, I saw that Father had come round, and was looking at me 
 through his eye-glass. He nodded to me, and said, "Yes, Mary, the 
 Squire has given Mary's Meadow to you, and it is yours." 
 
 Nothing would induce the Old Squire to take it back, so I had to 
 have it, for my very own. He said he had always been sorry he had 
 spoken so roughly to me, but he could not say so, as he and Father 
 were not on speaking terms. Just lately he was dining with Lady 
 Catherine, to meet her cousins from the Barracks, and she was telling 
 people after dinner about our game (rather mean of her, I think, to let 
 but our secrets at a dinner party), and when he heard about my planting 
 things in the hedges, he remembered what I had said. And next day 
 he went to the place to look, and there were the hose-in-hose. 
 
 Oh, how delighted the others were when they heard that Mary's 
 Meadow belonged to me. 
 
 "It's like having an Earthly Paradise given to you, straight off!" 
 said Harry. 
 
 " And one that doesn't want weeding," said Adela. 
 
 "And oh, Mary, Mary!" cried Arthur. "Think of the yards and 
 yards of top-spit. It does rejoice me to think I can go to you now when 
 I'm making compost, and need not be beholden to that old sell-up-your- 
 grandfather John for as much as would fill Adela's weeding basket, and 
 that's about as small an article as anyone can make-believe with " 
 
 " It's very heavy when it's full," said Adela. 
 
 " Is everything hers?" asked Christopher. " Is the grass hers, and 
 the trees hers, and the hedges hers, and the rooks hers, and the starling 
 hers, and will the nightingale be hers when he comes home, and if she 
 could dig through to the other side of the world, would there be a field 
 the same size in Australia that would be hers, and are the sheep hers, 
 and " 
 
 " For mercy's sake stop that catalogue, Chris," said Father. " Of 
 course the sheep are not hers ; they were moved yesterday. By-the-bye, 
 Mary, I don't know what you propose to do with your property, but if 
 you like to let it to me, I'll turn some sheep in to-morrow, and I'll pay 
 
FRIENDS ARE LIKE FIDDLE-STRINGS, f3 
 
 you so much a year, which I advise you to put into the Post Office 
 Savings' Bank." 
 
 I couldn't fancy Mary's Meadow always without sheep, so I was too 
 thankful ; though at first I could not see that it was fair that dear Father 
 should let me have his sheep to look pretty in my field for nothing, and 
 pay me, too. He is always teasing me about my field, and he teases me 
 a good deal about the Squire, too. He says we have set up another 
 queer friendship in the family, and that the Old Squire and I are as odd 
 a pair as Aunt Catherine and Chris. 
 
 I am very fond of the Old Squire now, and he is very kind to me. 
 He wants to give me Saxon, but I will not accept him. It would be 
 selfish. But the Old Squire says I had better take him, for we have 
 quite spoilt him for a yard dog by petting him, till he has not a bit of 
 savageness left in him. We do not believe Saxon ever was savage ; but 
 I daren't say so to the Old Squire, for he does not like you to think you 
 know better than he does about anything. There is one other subject 
 on which he expects to be humoured, and I am careful not to offend 
 him. He cannot tolerate the idea that he might be supposed to have 
 yielded to Father the point about which they went to law, in giving 
 Mary's Meadow to me. He is always lecturing me on encroachments, 
 and the abuse of privileges, and warning me to be very strict about 
 trespassers on the path through Mary's Meadow ; and now that the field 
 is mine, nothing will induce him to walk in it without asking my leave. 
 That is his protest against the decision from which" he meant to appeal. 
 
 Though I have not accepted Saxon, he spends most of his time 
 with us. He likes to come for the night, because he sleeps on the floor 
 of my room, instead of in a kennel, which must.be horrid, I am sure. 
 Yesterday, the Old Squire said, " One of these fine days, when Master 
 Saxon does not come home till morning, he'll find a big mastiff in his 
 kennel, and will have to seek a home for himself where he can." 
 
 Chris has been rather whimsical lately. Father says Lady Catherine 
 spoils him. One day he came to me, looking very peevish, and said, 
 "Mary, if a hedgehog should come and live in one of your hedges, 
 Michael says he would be yours, he's sure. If Michael finds him, will 
 you give him to me ? " 
 
 "Yes, Chris; but what do you want with a hedgehog?" 
 
 " I want him to sleep by my bed," said- Chris. " You have Saxon 
 by your bed ; I want something by mine. I want a hedgehog. I feel 
 discontented without a hedgehog. I think I might have something the 
 
74 THEY MUST NOT BE SCREWED TOO TIGHT. 
 
 matter with my brain if I didn't get a hedgehog pretty soon. Can I go 
 with Michael and look for him this afternoon?" and he put his hand to 
 his forehead. 
 
 "Chris, Chris !" I said, "you should not be so sly. You're a real 
 slyboots. Double-stockings and slyboots." And I took him on my lap. 
 
 Chris put his arms round my neck, and buried his cheek against 
 mine. 
 
 " I won't be sly, Mary," he whispered ; and then, hugging me as he 
 hugs Lady Catherine, he added, " For I do love you ; for you are a 
 darling, and I do really think it always was yours." 
 
 "What, Chris?" 
 
 "If not," said Chris, "why was it always called Mary's Meadow?'* 
 
LETTERS FROM A LITTLE GARDEN. 
 
76 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 ; All is fine that is fit."— Old Proverb. 
 
 EAR LITTLE FRIEND, 
 
 When, with the touching confidence 
 of youth that your elders have made-up as 
 well as grown-up minds on. all subjects, you 
 asked my bpinion on Ribbon-gardening, the 
 above proverb came into my head, to the 
 relief of its natural tendency to see 
 an inconvenient number of sides to 
 every question. The more I reflect 
 /"'"""S>^ai^yjy4 KT = ^r"" - 1 " '- upon it, the more I am convinced 
 
 f Jl^* x ~^^&sPw^ ~ i — • j t j s a comfortably compact con- 
 fession of my faith on all matters 
 decorative, and thence on the decoration of gardens. 
 
 I take some credit to myself for having the courage of my modera- 
 tion, since you obviously expect a more sweeping reply. The bedding- 
 out system is in bad odour just now; and you ask, "Wasn't it hideous?" 
 and "Wasn't it hateful?" and " Will it ever come into fashion again, to 
 the re-extermination of the dear old-fashioned flowers which we are 
 now slowly, and with pains, recalling from banishment? " 
 
 To discover one's own deliberate opinion upon a subject is not 
 always easy — prophetic opinions one must refuse to offer. But I feel 
 no doubt whatever that the good lady who shall coddle this little garden 
 at some distant date after me will be quite as fond of her borders as I 
 am of mine ; and I suspect that these will be about as like each other 
 as our respective best bonnets. 
 
TEMPUS EDAX RERUM. , 77 
 
 The annals of Fashion must always be full of funny stories. I 
 know two of the best amateur gardeners of the day; they are father 
 and son. The father, living and gardening still (he sent me a specimen 
 lily lately by parcel post, and is beholden to no one for help, either with 
 packing or addressing, in his constant use of this new convenience), is 
 making good way between ninety and a hundred years of age. What 
 we call old-fashioned flowers were the pets of his youth. About the 
 time when ribbon-bordering " came in," he changed his residence, and, 
 in the garden where he had cultivated countless kinds of perennials, his 
 son reigned in his stead. The horticultural taste proved hereditary, but 
 in the younger man it took the impress of the fashion of his day. Away 
 went the " herbaceous stuff " on to rubbish heaps, and the borders were 
 soon gay with geraniums, and kaleidoscopic with calceolarias. But '' the 
 whirligig of Time brings in his revenges," and, perhaps, a real love for 
 flowers could never, in the nature of things, have been finally satisfied by 
 the dozen or by the score ; so it came to pass that the garden is once more 
 herbaceous, and far-famed as such. The father — a perennial gardener 
 in more senses than one, long may he flourish ! — has told me, chuckling? 
 of many a penitential pilgrimage to the rubbish-heaps, if haply frag- 
 ments could be found of the herbaceous treasures which had been so 
 rashly cast away. 
 
 Doubtless there were many restorations. Abandoned " bedding 
 stuff" soon perishes, but uprooted clumps of " herbaceous stuff" linger 
 long in shady corners, and will sometimes flower pathetically on the 
 heap where they have been thrown to rot. 
 
 I once saw a fine " Queen Anne " country house — an old one ; not 
 a modern imitation. Chippendale had made the furniture. He had 
 worked in the house. Whether the chairs and tables were beautiful or 
 not is a matter of taste, but they were well made and seasoned ; so, like 
 the herbaceous stuff, they were hardy. The next generation decided 
 that they were ugly. New chairs and tables were bought, and the 
 Chippendale "stuff" was sent up into the maids' bedrooms, and down 
 to the men's. It drifted into the farmhouses and cottages on the estate. 
 No doubt, a good deal was destroyed. The caprices of fashion are 
 not confined to one class, and the lower classes are the more prodigal 
 and destructive. I have seen the remains of Elizabethan bedsteads 
 under hay-ricks, and untold " old oak " has fed the cottage fire. I once 
 asked a village maiden why the people made firewood of carved arm- 
 chairs, when painted pinewood, upholstered in American cloth, is, if 
 
78 ONE PLANT IS THERE WITH CROWN BEDIGHT, THE REST ABOVE. 
 
 lovelier, not so lasting. Her reply was — u They get stalled on* "era." 
 And she added : " Maybe a man '11 look at an old arm chair that's 
 stood on t' hearth-place as long as he can remember, and he'll say — 
 ' I'm fair sick o' t' seet o' yon. We munhave a new 'un for t' Feast. 
 r 11 chop thee oop!'" 
 
 Possibly some of the Chippendale chairs also fell to the hatchet 
 and fed the flames, but most of them bore neglect as well as hardy 
 perennials, and when Queen Anne houses and " old Chips " came into 
 fashion again, there was routing and rummaging from attic to cellar, in 
 farmhouse and cottage, and the banished furniture went triumphantly 
 back to its own place. 
 
 I first saw single dahlias in some " little gardens " in Cheshire, five 
 or six years ago. No others had ever been cultivated there. In these 
 quiet nooks the double dahlia was still a new-fangled flower. If the 
 single dahlias yet hold their own, those little gardens must now find 
 themselves in the height of the floral fashion, with the unusual luck of 
 the conservative old woman who "wore her bonnet till the fashions 
 came round again." 
 
 It is such little gardens which have kept for us the Blue Primrose, 
 the highly fragrant Summer Roses (including Rose de Meaux, and the 
 red and copper Briar), countless beautiful varieties of Daffy-down-dillies, 
 and all the host of sweet, various and hardy flowers which are now 
 returning, like the Chippendale chairs, from the village to the hall. 
 
 It is still in cottage gardens chiefly that the Crown Imperial hangs 
 its royal head. One may buy small sheaves of it in the Taunton 
 market-place on early summer Saturdays. What a stately flower it is! 
 and, in the paler variety, of what an exquisite yellow ! I always fancy 
 Fritillaria Imperialis flava to be dressed in silk from the Flowery Land 
 — that robe of imperial yellow which only General Gordon and the 
 blood royal of China are entitled to wear ! 
 
 " All is fine that is fit." And is the " bedding-out " system — 
 Ribbon-gardening — ever fit, and therefore ever fine ? My little friend, 
 I am inclined to think that it sometimes is. For long straight borders 
 in parks and public promenades, for some terrace gardens on a large 
 scale, viewed perhaps from windows at a considerable distance, and, in 
 
 * " Stalled on " = tired of. " T least" = the village feast, an annual festival 
 and fair, for which most houses in that district are cleaned within and whitewashed 
 without. 
 
ALL WORLDLY HAPPINESS 79 
 
 a general way, for pleasure grounds ordered by professional skill, and 
 not by an amateur gardener (which, mark you, being interpreted, is 
 gardener for love!), the bedding-out style is good for general effect, and 
 I think it is capable of prettier ingenuities than one often sees employed 
 in its use. I think that, if I ever gardened in this expensive and 
 mechanical style, I should make " arrangements," a la Whistler, with 
 flowers of various shades of the same colour. But harmony and 
 gradation of colour always give me more pleasure than contrast. 
 
 Then, besides the fitness of the gardening to the garden, there is 
 the fitness of the garden to its owner; and the owner must be considered 
 from two points of, view, his taste and his means. Indeed, I think it 
 would be fair to add a third, his leisure. 
 
 Now, there are owners of big gardens and little gardens, who like 
 to have a garden (what Englishman does not ?), and like to see it gay 
 and tidy, but who don't know one flower from the rest. On the other 
 hand, some scientists are acquainted with botany and learned in horti- 
 culture. They know every plant and its value, but they care little about 
 tidiness. Cut flowers are feminine frivolities in their eyes, and they 
 count nosegays as childish gauds, like daisy chains and cowslips balls. 
 They are not curious in colours, and do not know which flowers are 
 fragrant and which are scentless. For them every garden is a botanical 
 garden. Then, many persons fully appreciate the beauty and the scent 
 of flowers, and enjoy selecting and arranging them for a room, who 
 can't abide to handle a fork or meddle with mother earth. Others again, 
 amongst whom I number myself, love not only the lore of flowers, and the 
 sight of them, and the fragrance of them, and the growing of them, and 
 the picking of them, and the arranging of them, but also inherit from 
 Father Adam a natural relish for tilling the ground from whence they 
 were taken and to which they shall return. 
 
 With little persons in little gardens, having also little strength and 
 little leisure, this husbandry may not exceed the small uses of fork and 
 trowel, but the earth-love is there, all the same. I remember once, 
 coming among some family papers, upon an old letter from my grand- 
 mother to my grandfather. She was a clever girl (she did not outlive 
 youth), and the letter was natural and full of energy and point. My 
 grandfather seems to have apologized to his bride for the disorderly 
 state of the garden to which she was about to go home, and in reply 
 she quaintly and vehemently congratulates herself upon this unpromising 
 fact. For " I do so dearly love grubbing." This touches another 
 
8o CONSISTS IN OPINION. 
 
 point. She was a botanist, and painted a little. So were most of the 
 lady gardeners of her youth. The education of women was, as a rule, 
 poor enough in those days ; but a study of " the Linnean system " was 
 among the elegant accomplishments held to '•become a young woman"; 
 and one may feel pretty sure that even a smattering of botanical know- 
 ledge, and the observation needed for third or fourth-rate flower- 
 painting, would tend to a love of variety in beds and borders which 
 Ribbon-gardening would by no means satisfy. Lobelia erinus speciosa 
 does make a wonderfully smooth blue stripe in sufficient quantities, but 
 that would not console any one who knew or had painted Lobelia 
 cardinalis, and fidgens for the banishment of these from the garden. 
 
 I think we may dismiss Ribbon-gardening as unfit for a botanist, 
 or for any one who happens to like grubbing, or tending his flowers. 
 
 Is it ever " fit " in a little garden ? 
 
 Well, if the owner has either no taste for gardening, or no time, it 
 may be the shortest and brightest plan to get some nurseryman near to 
 fill the little beds and borders with spring bedding plants for spring (and 
 let me note that this spring bedding, which is of later date than the first 
 rage for ribbon-borders, had to draw its supplies very largely from 
 " herbaceous stuff " myosotis, viola, aubretia, iberis, &c, and may have 
 paved the way for the return of hardy perennials into favour), and with 
 Tom Thumb Geranium, Blue Lobelia, aud Yellow Calceolaria for the 
 summer and autumn. These latter are most charming plants. They 
 are very gay and persistent whilst they last, and it is not their fault 
 that they cannot stand our winters. They are no invalids till frost 
 comes. With my personal predilections, I like even "bedding stuff" 
 best in variety. The varieties of what we call geraniums are many and 
 most beautiful. I should always prefer a group of individual specimens 
 to a band of one. And never have I seen the canary yellow of calceo- 
 larias to such advantage as in an " old-fashioned " rectory-garden in 
 Yorkshire, where they were cunningly used as points of brilliancy at 
 corners of beds mostly filled with " hardy herbaceous stuff." 
 
 But there, again, one begins to spend time and taste ! Let us 
 admit that, if a little garden must be made gay by the neighbouring 
 nurseryman, it will look very bright, on the " ribbon " system, at a 
 minimum cost of time and trouble — but not of money! 
 
 Even for a little garden, bedding plants are very expensive. For 
 you must either use plenty, or leave it alone. A ragged ribbon-border 
 can have no admirers. 
 
NON SIBI SED TOTI. Si 
 
 If time and money are both lacking, and horticulture is not a 
 hobby, divide what sum you are prepared to spend on your little garden 
 in two. Lay out half in making good soil, and spend the rest on a 
 limited range of hardy plants. If mother earth is well fed, and if you 
 have got her deep down, and not a surface layer of half a foot on a 
 substratum of builder's rubbish, she will take care of every plant you 
 commit to her hold. I should give up the back of the borders (if the 
 aspect is east or south) to a few very good "perpetual" roses to cut 
 from ; dwarfs, not standards ; and for the line of colour in front it will 
 be no great trouble to arrange roughly to have red, white, blue, and 
 yellow alternately. 
 
 One of the best cheap bedders is Pink Catchfly (Silene penduld). 
 Its rosy cushions are as neat and as lasting as Blue Lobelia. It is a 
 hardy annual, but the plants should be autumn sown of the year before. 
 It flowers early and long, and its place might be taken for the autumn 
 by scarlet dwarf nasturtiums, or clumps of geranium. Pink Catchfly, 
 Blue Forget-me-not, White Arabis, and Yellow' Viola would make gay 
 any spring border. Then to show, to last, and to cut from, few flowers 
 rival the self-coloured pansies (Viola class). Blue, white, purple, and 
 yellow alternately, they are charming, and if in good soil, well-watered 
 in drought, and constantly cut from, they bloom the whole summer 
 long. And some of them are very fragrant. The secret of success 
 with these is never to leave a flower to go to seed. They are not cut 
 off by autumnal frosts. On the contrary, you can take them up, and 
 divide, and reset, and send a portion to other little gardens where they 
 are lacking. 
 
 All mine (and they have been very gay this year and very sweet) 
 I owe to the bounty of friends who garden nan sibi sedtoti. 
 
 Lastly, if there is even a very little taste and time to spare, surely 
 nothing can be so satisfactory as a garden full of such flowers as (in the 
 words of John Parkinson) " our English ayre will permitt to be noursed 
 up." Bearing in mind these counsels : 
 
 Make a wise selection of hardy plants. Grow only good sorts, 
 and of these choose what suit your soil and climate. Give them space 
 and good feeding. Disturb the roots as little as possible, and cut the 
 flowers constantly. Then they will be fine as well as fit. 
 
 Good-bye, Little Friend, 
 
 Yours, &c. 
 
82 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 "The tropics may have their delights; but they have not turf, and the world 
 without turf is a dreary desert. The original Garden of Eden could not have had 
 such turf as one sees in England. 
 
 " Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a garden. 
 
 "Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge 
 in it." 
 
 Pttsley; or, My Summer in a Garden. — C. D. Warner. 
 
 Dear Little Friend, 
 
 O you know the little book 
 from which these sayings 
 are quoted? It is one you 
 can laugh over by your- 
 self, again and again. A 
 very good specimen of that 
 curious, new-world kind of 
 wit — American humour ; 
 and also full of the truest 
 sense of natural beauty 
 and of gardening delights. 
 Mr. Warner is not 
 complimentary to woman's 
 work in the garden, though 
 he displays all the graceful 
 deference of his countrymen to the weaker sex. In the charming 
 dedication to his wife, whilst desiring " to acknowledge an influence 
 which has lent half the charm to my labour," he adds : " If I were in a 
 court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should not like to say that, 
 either in the wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer 
 solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the 
 least use in the garden." Perhaps our fair cousins on the other side of 
 the Atlantic do not grub so energetically as we do. Certainly, with 
 us it is very common for the ladies of the family to be the practical 
 
TO SPARE THEE NOW IS PAST MY POWER, 83 
 
 gardeners, the master of the house caring chiefly for a good general 
 effect, with tidy walks and grassplots, and displaying less of that almost 
 maternal solicitude which does bring flowers to perfection. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that it would be a good division of 
 labour in a Little Garden, if, where Joan coddles the roses and rears the 
 seedlings, Darby would devote some of his leisure to the walks and 
 grassplots. 
 
 Few things in one's garden are pleasanter to one's own eye, or gain 
 more admiration from others, than well-kept turf. Green grass is one 
 of the charms of the British Isles, which are emerald isles throughout, 
 though Ireland is so par excellence. It is so much a matter of course 
 to us that we hardly realize this till we hear or read what foreigners say 
 about it, and also our own American and colonial cousins. We go 
 abroad and revel in real sunshine, and come home with glowing 
 memories to abuse our own cloudy skies ; but they come from burnt- up 
 landscapes to refresh their eyes with our perpetual green. 
 
 Even a little grassplot well repays pains and care. If you have to 
 make it, never use cheap seed. Buy the very best from seedsmen of 
 repute, or you will get a conglomeration of weeds instead of a green- 
 sward of fine grasses and white clover. Trench the ground to an even 
 depth, tread it firm, and have light, finely-sifted soil uppermost. Sow 
 thickly early in April, cover lightly, and protect from birds. If the soil 
 is good, and the seed first-rate, your sward will be green the first season. 
 
 Turfs make a lawn somewhat quicker than seed. The best are 
 cut from the road-side, but it is a hateful despoiling of one of the 
 fairest of travellers' joys. Those who commit this highway robbery 
 should reckon themselves in honour bound to sow the bare places they 
 leave behind. Some people cut the pieces eighteen inches square, 
 some about a yard long and twelve inches wide. Cut thin, roll up like 
 thin bread and butter. When they are laid down, fit close together, like 
 bits of a puzzle, and roll well after laying. If they gape with shrinking, 
 fill in between with finely sifted soil, and roll again and again. 
 
 Strictly speaking, a grassplot should be all grass, grass and a little 
 white clover. " Soldiers " (of the plantain type) are not to be tolerated 
 on a lawn, but I have a weak corner for dog-daisies. I once owned a 
 little garden in Canada, but never a dog-daisy grew there. A lady I 
 knew had one — in a pot — sent from " Home." But even if you have a 
 sentimental fondness for "the pretty things" (as their botanical name 
 signifies), and like to see their little white faces peeping out of the grass, 
 
84 THOU BONNIE GEM. 
 
 this must not be carried too far. In some soils dog-daisies will soon 
 devour the whole lawn. 
 
 How are they, and " soldiers," and other weeds to be extirpated ? 
 There are many nostrums, but none so effectual as a patient digging up 
 (with a long " daisy fork ") of plant after plant by the roots. The whole 
 family party and any chance visitors will not be too many for the work, 
 and, if each labourer is provided with a cast-iron back with a hinge in 
 it, so much the better. A writer in the Garden seems to have been 
 very successful with salt, used early in the season and with great care. 
 He says : " After the first cutting in the spring put as much salt on 
 each weed, through the palm of the hand, as will distinctly cover it. In 
 two or three days, depending on the weather, they will turn brown. 
 Those weeds that have escaped can be distinctly seen, and the opera- 
 tion should be repeated. The weeds thus treated die, and in about 
 three weeks the grass will have grown, and there will not be a vestige of 
 disturbance left. Two years ago I converted a rough pasture into a 
 tennis-ground for six courts. Naturally the turf was a mass of rough 
 weeds. It took three days to salt them, and the result was curiously 
 successful." 
 
 Another prescription is to cut off the crowns of the offending 
 .plants, and dose them with a few drops of carbolic acid. 
 
 Grass will only grow dense by constant cutting and moisture. The 
 scythe works best when the grass is wet, and the machine when it is 
 dry. Sweep it and roll it during the winter. Pick off stones, sticks, or 
 anything that " has no business " on it, as you would pick " bits " off a 
 carpet. 
 
 If grass grows rank and coarse, a dressing of sand will improve it ; 
 if it is poor and easily burned up, give it a sprinkling of soot, or guano, 
 or wood ashes (or all three mixed) before rain. " Slops " are as welcome 
 to parched grass as to half-starved flowers. If the weather is hot and 
 the soil light, it is well occasionally to leave the short clippings of one 
 mowing upon the lawn to protect the roots. 
 
 I do not know if it becomes unmanageable, but, in moderation, I 
 think camomile a very charming intruder on a lawn, and the aromatic 
 scent which it yields to one's tread to be very grateful -in the open air. 
 It is pleasant, too, to have a knoll or a bank somewhere, where thyme 
 can grow among the grass. But the subject of flowers that grow well 
 through grass is a large one. It is one also on which the members of 
 our Parkinson Society would do kindly to give us any exceptional expe- 
 
ALL FISH ARE NOT CAUGHT WITH FLIES. 85 
 
 riences, especially in reference to flowers which not only flourish among 
 grass, but do not resent being mown down. The lovely blue windflower 
 {Anemone Apennina) is, I believe, one of these. 
 
 There is no doubt that now and then plants prefer to meet with a 
 little resistance, and despise a bed that is made too comfortable. Self- 
 sown ones often come up much more vigorously through the hard path 
 than when the seed has fallen within the border. The way to grow the 
 parsley fern is said to be to clap a good big stone on his crown very 
 early in the spring, and let him struggle out at all corners from under- 
 neath it. It is undoubtedly a comfort to rock-plants and creeping 
 things to be planted with a stone over their feet to keep them cool \ 
 
 Which reminds me of stones for bordering. I think they make 
 the best of all edgings for a Little Garden. Box -edgings are the 
 prettiest, but they are expensive, require good keeping, and harbour 
 slugs. For that matter, most things seem to harbour slugs in any but a 
 very dry climate, and there are even more prescriptions for their destruc- 
 tion than that of lawn weeds. I don't think lime does much, nor soot. 
 Wet soon slakes them. Thick slices of turnip are attractive. Slugs 
 really do seem to like them, even better than one's favourite seedlings. 
 Little heaps of bran also, and young lettuces. My slugs do not care 
 for cabbage leaves, and they are very untidy. Put thick slices of turnip 
 near your auriculas, favourite primroses and polyanthuses, and Christmas 
 roses, and near anything tender and not well established, and overhaul 
 them early in the morning. " You can't get up too early, if you have a 
 garden," says Mr. Warner ; and he adds : " Things appear to go on in 
 the night in the garden uncommonly. It would be less trouble to stay 
 up than it is to get up so early ! " 
 
 To return to stone edgings. When quite newly laid, like miniature 
 rockwork, they are, perhaps, the least bit cockneyfied, and suggestive of 
 something between oyster-shell borderings and mock ruins. But this 
 effect very rapidly disappears as they bury themselves in cushions of 
 pink catch-fly (v. compacta), or low-growing pinks, tiny campanulas, 
 yellow viola, London pride, and the vast variety of rock-plants, "alpines," 
 and low-growing " herbaceous stuff," which delight in squeezing up to a 
 big cool stone that will keep a little moisture for their rootlets in hot 
 summer weather. This is a much more interesting kind of edging than 
 any one kind of plant can make, I think, and in a Little Garden it is 
 like an additional border, leaving the other free for bigger plants. If 
 one kind is preferred, for a light soil there is nothing like thrift. And 
 
86 THE OLD ADAM. 
 
 the white thrift is very silvery and more beautiful than the pink. There 
 is a large thrift, too, which is handsome. But I prefer stones, and I like 
 varieties of colour — bits of grey boulder, and red and yellow sandstone. 
 
 I like warm colour also on the walks. I should always have red 
 walks if I could afford them. There is a red material, the result of some 
 process of burning, which we used to get in the iron and coal districts 
 of Yorkshire, which I used to think very pretty, but I do not know 
 what it is called. 
 
 Good walks are a great luxury. It is a wise economy to go round 
 your walks after rain and look for little puddles ; make a note of where 
 the water lodges and fill it up. Keep gratings swept. If the grating is 
 free and there is an overflow not to be accounted for, it is very possible 
 that a drain-pipe somewhere is choke-full of the roots of some tree. 
 
 Some people advise hacking up your walks from time to time, and 
 other people advise you not. Some people say there is nothing like salt 
 to destroy walk weeds and moss, and brighten the gravel, and some 
 people say that salt in the long run feeds the ground and the weeds. 
 I am disposed to think that, in a Little Garden, there is nothing like a 
 weeding woman with an old knife and a little salt afterwards. It is also 
 advisable to be your own weeding woman, that you may be sure that 
 the weeds come up by the roots ! Next to the cast-iron back before 
 mentioned, I recommend a housemaid's kneeling mat (such as is used 
 for scrubbing floors), as a gardener's comfort. 
 
 I hope, if you have been bulb planting, that you got them all in by 
 Lord Mayor's Day. Whether bulbs should be planted deep or shallow 
 is another "vexed question." In a Little Garden, where you don't 
 want to disturb them, and may like to plant out some small rooted^ 
 annuals on the top of them later on, I should plant deep. 
 
 If you are planting roses, remember that two or three, carefully 
 planted in good stuff that goes deep, will pay you better than six times 
 the number stuck into a hole in cold clay or sand or builders' rubbish, 
 and left to push their rootlets as best they can, or perish in the attempt 
 Spread out these rootlets very tenderly when planting. You will reap 
 the reward of your gentleness in flowers. Rose roots don't like being 
 squeezed, like a Chinese lady's feet. I was taught this by one who 
 knows, — He has a good name for the briar suckers and sprouts which 
 I hope you carefully cut off from your grafted roses, — He calls it " the 
 old Adam ! " 
 
 Yours, &c. 
 
87 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 A good rule 
 Is a good tool. 
 
 Dear Little Friend, 
 
 ANUARY is not a month 
 in which you are likely to 
 be doing much in your little 
 garden. Possibly a wet 
 blanket of snow lies thick 
 and white over all its hopes 
 and anxieties. No doubt 
 you made all tidy, and 
 some things warm, for the 
 winter, in the delicious 
 opportunities of S. Luke's 
 and S. Martin's little summers, and, like the amusing American I told 
 you of, " turned away writing resurgam on the gate-post." 
 
 I write resurgam on labels, and put them wherever bulbs lie buried, 
 or such herbaceous treasures as 4ie"down, and are, in consequence, too 
 often treated as mere mortal remains of the departed, by the undis- 
 criminating hand of the jobbing gardener. 
 
 Winter is a good time to make plans, and to put them down in 
 your Garden-book. Have you a Garden-book? A note-book, I mean, 
 devoted to garden memoranda. It is a very useful kind of common- 
 place book, and soon becomes as fascinating as autumn and spring 
 catalogues. 
 
 One has to learn to manage even a Little Garden chiefly by 
 experience, which is slow teaching, if sure. Books and gardeners are 
 helpful ; but, like other doctors, they differ. I think one is often slower 
 to learn anything than one need be, from not making at once for first 
 
88 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 
 
 principles. If one knew more of these, it would be easier to apply 
 one's own experience, and to decide amid conflicting advice. 
 
 Here are a few rough and ready " first principles " for you. 
 
 Hardy flowers in hedges and ditches are partly fed, and are also 
 covered from cold and heat, and winds, and drought, by fallen leaves and 
 refuse. Hardy flowers in gardens have all this tidied away from them, 
 and, being left somewhat hungry and ?iaked in proportion, are all the 
 better for an occasional top-dressing and mulching, especially in autumn. 
 It is not absolutely necessary to turn a flower border upside down and 
 dig it over every year. It may (for some years at any rate), if you find 
 this more convenient, be treated on the hedge system, and fed from the 
 top; thinning big clumps, pulling up weeds, moving and removing in 
 detail. 
 
 Concentrated strength means large blooms. If a plant is ripening seed, 
 some strength goes to that ; if bursting into many blooms, some goes 
 to each of them ; if it is trying to hold up against blustering winds, 
 or to thrive on exhausted ground, or to straighten out cramped and 
 clogged roots, these struggles also demand strength. Moral : Plant 
 carefully, support your tall plants, keep all your plants in easy circum- 
 stances, don't put them to the trouble of ripening seed (unless you 
 specially want it). To this end cut off fading flowers, and also cut off 
 buds in places where they would not show well when they came out, and 
 all this economized strength will go into the blossoms that remain. 
 
 You cannot grow everything. Grow what suits your soil and climate, 
 and the best kinds of these, as well as you can. You may make soil to suit 
 a plant, but you cannot make the climate to suit it, and some flowers are 
 more fastidious about the air they breathe than about the soil they feed 
 upon. There are, however, scores of sturdy, handsome flowers, as hardy 
 as highlanders, which will thrive in almost any soil, and under all the 
 variations of climate of the British Isles. Some will even endure the 
 smoke-laden atmosphere of towns and town suburbs ; which, sooner or 
 later, is certain death to so many. It is a pity that small florists and 
 greengrocers in London do not know more about this ; and it would be 
 a great act of kindness to them and to their customers to instruct them. 
 Then, instead of encouraging the ruthless slaughter of primroses, scores 
 and hundreds of plants of which are torn up and then sold in a smoky 
 atmosphere to which they never adapt themselves, these small shop- 
 keepers might offer plants of the many beautiful varieties of poppies, 
 from the grand Orientalis onwards, chrysanthemums, stocks, wall-flowers, 
 
JACK FROST AND MR. MOULD. 89 
 
 Canterbury bells, salvias, Oenotheras, snapdragons, perennial lobelias, iris, 
 and other plants which are known to be very patient under a long course 
 of soot. Most of the hardy Californian annuals bear town life welL 
 Perhaps because they have only to bear it for a year. Convolvulus 
 major — the Morning Glory, as our American cousins so prettily call it — 
 flourishes on a smutty wall as generously as the Virginian creeper. 
 
 North borders- are safest in winter. They are free from the dangerous 
 alternation of sunshine and frost. Put things of doubtful hardihood 
 under a north wall, with plenty of sandy soil or ashes over their roots, 
 some cinders on that, and perhaps a little light protection, like bracken, 
 in front of them, and their chances will not be bad. Apropos to tender 
 things, if your little garden is in a cold part of the British Isles, and has 
 ungenial conditions of soil and aspect, don't try to keep tender things 
 out of doors in winter ; but, if it is in the south or west of the British 
 Isles, I should be tempted to very wide experiments with lots of \ plants 
 not commonly reckoned " hardy." Where laurels flower freely you will 
 probably be successful eight years out of ten. Most fuchsias, and 
 tender things which die down, may be kept. 
 
 Very little will keep Jack Frost out, if he has not yet been in, either 
 in the garden or the house. A " hot bottle " will keep frost out of a 
 small room where one has stored geraniums, &c, so will a small paraffin 
 lamp (which — N.B. — will also keep water-pipes from catastrophe.) How 
 I have toiled, in my young days, with these same hot water bottles in a 
 cupboard off the nursery, which was my nearest approach to a green- 
 house ! And how sadly I have experienced that where Mr. Frost goes 
 out Mr. Mould is apt to slink in ! Truly, as Mr. Warner says, " the 
 gardener needs all the consolations of a high philosophy ! " 
 
 It is a great satisfaction if things will live out of doors. And in a 
 little garden a good deal of coddling may be done. I am going to get 
 some round fruit hampers to turn over certain tender pets this winter. 
 When one has one's flowers by the specimen and not by the score, such 
 cossetting is possible. Ashes and cinders are excellent protection for 
 the roots, and for plants — like roses — which do not die back to the 
 earth level, and which sometimes require a screen as well as a quilt ; 
 bracken, fir branches, a few pea sticks, and matting or straw are all 
 handy helps. The old gentleman who ran out — without his dressing 
 gown — to fling his own bed-quilt over some plants endangered by an 
 unexpected frost, came very near to having a fine show of bloom and 
 not being there to see it ; but, short of this excessive zeal, when one's 
 
go OLD SAWS AND OLD HABITS. 
 
 garden is a little one, and close to one's threshold, one may catch Jack 
 Frost on the surface of many bits of rough and ready fencing on very 
 cold nights. 
 
 In drought, one good soaking with tepid water is worth six sprink- 
 lings. Watering is very fatiguing, but it is unskilled labour, and one 
 ought to be able to hire strong arms to do it at a small rate. But I 
 never met the hired person yet who could be persuaded that it was 
 needful to do more than make the surface of the ground look as if it 
 had been raining. 
 
 There is a " first principle " of which some gardeners are very fond, 
 but in which I do not believe, that if you begin to water you must go 
 on, and that too few waterings do harm. What I don't believe is that 
 they do harm, nor did I ever meet with a gardener who complained of 
 an odd shower, even if the skies did not follow it up. An odd sprink- 
 ling does next to no good, but an odd soaking may save the lives of 
 your plants. In very hot weather don't grudge a few waterings to 
 your polyanthuses and primroses. If they are planted in open sunny 
 borders with no shade or hedge-mulching, they suffer greatly from 
 drought. 
 
 Flowers, like human beings, are, to some extent, creatures of habit. 
 They get used to many things which they can't at all abide once in a 
 way. If your little garden (like mine) is part of a wandering establish- 
 ment, here to-day and there to-morrow, you may get even your roses 
 into very good habits of moving good-humouredly, and making them- 
 selves quickly at home. If plants from the first are accustomed to 
 being moved about, — every year, or two years, — they do not greatly 
 resent it. A real " old resident," who has pushed his rootlets far and 
 wide, and never tried any other soil or aspect, is very slow to settle else- 
 where, even if he does not die of nostalgia and nervous shock ! In 
 making cuttings, consider the habits and customs of the parent plant. 
 If it has been grown in heat, the cuttings will require heat to start 
 them. And so on, as to dry soil or moist, &c. If somebody gives you 
 "a root" in hot weather, or a bad time for moving, when you have 
 made your hole pour water in very freely. Saturate the ground below, 
 " puddle in " your plants with plenty more, and you will probably save 
 it, especially if you turn a pot or basket over it in the heat of the day. 
 In warm weather plant in the evening, the new-comers then have a 
 round of the clock in dews and restfulness before the sun is fierce 
 enough to make them flag. In cold weather move in the morning, and 
 
GOOD LUCK 91 
 
 for the same period they will be safe from possible frost. Little, if any, 
 watering is needed for late autumn plantings. 
 
 Those parts of a plant tvhich are not accustomed to exposure are 
 those which suffer from it. You may garden bare-handed in a cold wind 
 and not be the worse for it, but, if both your arms were bared to the 
 shoulders, the consequences would probably be very different. A 
 bundle of rose-trees or shrubs will bear a good deal on their leaves and 
 branches, but for every moment you leave their roots exposed to drying 
 and chilling blasts they suffer. When a plant is out of the ground, pro- 
 tect its crown and its roots at once. If a plant is moved quickly, it is 
 advantageous, of course, to take it up with as much earth as possible, if 
 the roots remain undisturbed in their little plat. Otherwise, earth is no 
 better than any other protection ; and in sending plants by post, &c. 
 (when soil weighs very heavily), it is better to wash every bit of soil out 
 of the roots, and then thoroughly wrap them in moss, and outside that 
 in hay or tow, or cotton wool. Then, if the roots are comfortably 
 spread in nice mould at the other end of the journey, all should go 
 well. 
 
 I reserve a sneaking credulity about "lucky fingers." Or rather, I 
 should say, a belief that some people have a strange power (or tact) in 
 dealing with the vegetable world, as others have in controlling and 
 coaxing animals. 
 
 It is a vivid memory of my childhood that (amongst the box-edged 
 gardens of a family of eight), that of my eldest brother was almost 
 inconvenienced by the luck of his fingers. " Survival of the fittest " (if 
 hardiest does mean fittest ! ) kept the others within bounds ; but what 
 he begged, borrowed, and stole, survived, all of it, conglomerate around 
 the " double velvet " rose, which formed the centrepiece. We used to 
 say that when the top layer was pared off, a buried crop came up. 
 
 An old friend with lucky fingers visited my Little Garden this 
 autumn. He wanders all over the world, and has no garden of his 
 own except window-boxes in London, where he seems to grow what he 
 pleases. He is constantly doing kindnesses, and likes to do them his 
 own way. He christened a border (out of which I had not then turned 
 the builders' rubbish) Desolation Border, with more candour than com- 
 pliment. He said it wanted flowers, and he meant to sow some. 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 
 
92 IS BETTER THAN GOLD. 
 
 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. They all came up. He said, " I shall put them in 
 where I think it is desirable, and when they come up you'll see where 
 they are." I did. 
 
 For some days after his departure, on other country visits, I 
 received plants by post. Not in tins, or boxes, but in envelopes with 
 little or no packing. In this way came sea lavender in full bloom, 
 crimson monkey plant from the London window box, and cuttings of 
 mesembryanthemum. They are ah alive and thriving ! 
 
 The bottle gourd and the annuals have had their day, and it is 
 over; but in the most unexpected places there still rise, like ghosts, 
 certain plants which completely puzzle me.* They have not blossomed, 
 but they grow on in spite of frost. Some of them are nearly as tall as 
 myself. They almost alarm me when I am dividing violas, and trifling 
 with Alpines. They stand over me (without sticks) and seem to say, 
 " We are up, you see where we are ! We shall grow as long as we 
 think it desirable." 
 
 Farewell for the present, Little Friend, 
 
 Yours, &c. 
 
 * When fully grown these plants proved to be the Tree-Mallow, Lavatera 
 jrborea, the seeds were gathered from specimens on the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 
LETTER IV. 
 
 When Candlemas Day is come and gone, 
 The snow lies on a hot stone. — Old Saw. 
 
 Dear Little Friend, 
 
 MONG all the changes and 
 chances of human life which 
 go to make up fiction as well 
 as fact, there is one change 
 which has never chanced to 
 any man ; and yet the 
 idea has been found 
 so fascinating by all 
 men that it appears in 
 the literature of every 
 country. Most other 
 fancied transform- 
 ations are recorded as 
 facts somewhere in 
 the history of our 
 race. Poor men have 
 ■ become rich, the 
 beggar has sat among 
 princes, the sick have 
 been made whole, the 
 dead havebeen raised, 
 the neglected man has 
 awoke to find himself 
 famous, rough and 
 kindly beasts have 
 been charmed by 
 lovely ladies into very 
 passable Princes, and 
 " — - it would be hard to 
 
 ■* say that the ugly have 
 
 not seen themselves beautiful in the mirror of friendly eyes ; but the old 
 have never become young. The elixir of youth has intoxicated the 
 imagination of many, but no drop of it has ever passed human lips. 
 
94 I WONDERD at the bounteous hours, 
 
 If we ever do just taste anything of the vital, hopeful rapture, the 
 elastic delight of the old man of a fairy tale, who leaves his cares, his 
 crutches, and his chimney-corner, to go forth again young amongst the 
 young, — it is when the winter is ended and the spring is come. Some 
 people may feel this rising of the sap of life within them more than others, 
 but there are probably very few persons whom the first mild airs and 
 bursting buds and pushing flower-crowns do not slightly intoxicate with 
 a sort of triumphant pleasure. 
 
 What then, dear little friend, must be the February feelings of the 
 owner of a Little Garden? Knowing, as we do, every plant and its 
 place, — having taken just pride in its summer bloom, — having preserved 
 this by cares and trimmings and proppings to a picturesque and florid 
 autumn, though wild flowers have long been shrivelled and shapeless, — 
 having tidied it up and put a little something comforting round it when 
 bloom and outline were absolutely no more : what must we feel when 
 we first detect the ruddy young shoots of our favourite pceonies, or 
 perceive that the brown old hepaticas have become green and young 
 again and are full of flower-buds ? 
 
 The process of strolling, with bent back and peering eyes, by the 
 side of the still frosty borders is so deeply interesting, and a very little 
 sunshine on a broad band of crocuses has such a summer-like effect, that 
 one is apt to forget that it is one of the cheapest ways of catching cold. 
 The last days of the gardening year not unfrequently lead from the 
 flower-bed to the sick-bed. But though there is for susceptible folk a 
 noxious influence in the decaying vegetation of autumn, from which 
 spring is free, there is bitter treachery in many a spring wind, and the 
 damp of the ground seems to reek with the exuding chill of all the 
 frosts that have bound it in mid-winter. 
 
 I often wonder that, for some exigencies of weather, the outdoor 
 red-flannel knickerbockers which one wears in Canada are not more in 
 use here. The very small children have all their clothes stuffed into 
 them, and tumble safely about in the snow like little Dutchman. Older 
 wearers of petticoats cram all in except the outermost skirt. It is a 
 very simple garment made of three pieces, — two (straight) legs and a 
 large square. The square is folded like a kerchief, and the leg pieces 
 attached to the two sloping sides. A broad elastic and small openings 
 on each side and at the top enable these very baggy knickerbockers to 
 be easily pulled on for going out (where they effectually exclude cold 
 exhalations from snow or damp ground), and pulled off on coming in. 
 
THE SLOW RESULT OF WINTER SHOWERS : gj 
 
 Short of such coddling as this, I strongly urge fleecy cork socks 
 inside your garden boots ; and I may add that if you've never tried 
 them, you can have no idea of the warmth and comfort of a pair of 
 boy's common yellow-leather leggings, but the buttons will require some 
 adjusting. 
 
 Of course, very robust gardeners are independent of these trouble- 
 some considerations ; but the gardening members of a family, whether 
 young or old, are very often not those vigorous people who can enjoy 
 their fresh air at unlimited tennis or a real good stretching walk over 
 the hills. They are oftener those weaker vessels who have to be content 
 with strolls, and drives, and sketching, and "pottering about the garden." 
 
 Now, pottering about the garden in spring and autumn has many 
 risks for feeble vitalities, and yet these are just the seasons when every- 
 thing requires doing, and there is a good hour's work in every yard of a 
 pet border any day. So verbum sap. One has to "pay with one's 
 person " for most of one's pleasures, if one is delicate ; but it is possible 
 to do a great deal of equinoctial grubbing with safety and even benefit, 
 if one is very warmly protected, especially about the feet and legs. 
 These details are very tedious for young people, but not so tedious as 
 being kept indoors by a cold. 
 
 And not only must delicate gardeners be cossetted with little 
 advantages at these uncertain seasons, the less robust of the flowers 
 gain equally by timely care. Jack Frost comes and goes, and leaves 
 many plants (especially those planted the previous autumn) half jumped 
 out of the ground. Look out for this, and tread them firmly in again. 
 A shovel-full of cinder-siftings is a most timely attention round the 
 young shoots of such as are poking up their noses a little too early, and 
 seem likely to get them frost-bitten. Most alpines and low-growing 
 stuff will bear light rolling after the frost has unsettled them. This is 
 done is large gardens, but in a Little Garden they can be attended to 
 individually. Give a little protection to what is too forward in growth, 
 or badly placed, or of doubtful hardihood, or newly planted. Roses 
 and hardy perennials can be planted in open weather. 
 
 But you will not really be very busy outside till March, and we are 
 not concerning ourselves with what has to be done " in heat," where a 
 good deal is going on. 
 
 Still, in mild climates or seasons (and one must always remember 
 how greatly the British Isles vary in parts, as to climate), the idea of 
 seedlings and cuttings will begin to stir our souls, when February " fills 
 
g6 YOU SCARCE COULD SEE THE GRASS FOR FLOWERS. 
 
 dike," if it is "with black and not with white," i.e., with rain and not 
 snow. So I will just say that for a Little Garden, and a mixed garden, 
 demanding patches, not scores of things, you can raise a wonderfully 
 sufficient number of half-hardy things in an ordinary room, with one or 
 two bell-glasses to give the moist atmosphere in which sitting-rooms are 
 wanting. A common tumbler will cover a dozen " seedlings," and there 
 you have two nice little clumps of half a dozen plants each, when they 
 are put out. (And mind you leave them space to spread.) A lot of 
 little cuttings can be rooted in wet sand. Hard-wooded cuttings may 
 grow along slowly in cool places ; little juicy soft ones need warmth, 
 damp, and quick pushing forward. The very tips of fuchsias grow very 
 easily struck early in wet sand, and will flower the same year. Kind 
 friends will give you these, and if they will also give you " tips " of 
 white, yellow, and blue Marguerites (this last is Agathea ce/estis), these 
 strike as easily as chrysanthemums, and are delightful afterwards to cut 
 from. They are not very tender, though not quite hardy. 
 
 For the few pots and pans and boxes of cuttings and seedlings 
 which you require, it is well worth while to get a small stock of good 
 compost from a nursery gardener ; leaf mould, peat, and sand, whether 
 for seedlings or cuttings. Always sink your pot in a second covering. 
 Either have your pots sunk in a box of s: :id, which you can keep damp, 
 or have small pots sunk in larger ones. A great coat to prevent evapora- 
 tion, in some shape, is invaluable. 
 
 Yours, &c, 
 
 J. H. E. 
 
H'OJIKS BY JULIANA HORATIA EWING. 
 
 JACKANAPES. 
 
 "With Seventeen Illustrations by Randolph Caldecott. 
 Small 4/0, Ornamental Paper Boards, is. 
 
 " As good a stcry, and as well told, as anybody is likely to write, or anybody could wish to read, lull of genuine 
 humour and of true, deep pathetic leeling. . . . Manliness as a Christian virtue, courage, endurance, and 
 constancy, are the qualities especially recommended by the short but valiant career of the young hero." — Graphic. 
 
 DADDY DARWIN'S DOVECOT: 
 
 A COUNTRY TALE. 
 
 f 
 With Seventeen Illustrations by Randolph Caldecott. 
 
 Small a,to, Ornamental Paper Boards, IS. 
 
 "Another charming tale called 'Daddy Darwin's Dovecot.' The author of 'Jackanapes' had no slight ta-k 
 before her if she wished to keep up her reputation, and if she has not quite fulfilled it she has not come far short. 
 Though this story ends well, it is none the less attractive for that." — Guardian. 
 
 THE STORY OF A SHORT LIFE. 
 
 "With Seventeen Illustrations oy Gordon Browne. 
 
 Small \to, Ornamental Paper Boards, is. 
 
 " A simple, exquisitely tender little story of Aldershot life." — United Sendee Gazette. 
 " A charming study of child character, lull of pathos and grace." — Scotsman. 
 
 LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE; 
 
 OK, THE LUCK OF L/NGBOKOUGH. 
 
 With Nineteen Illustrations by Randolph Caldecott. 
 
 Small ^to, Ornamental Paper Boards, is. 
 
 " Yet another of Mrs. Ewing's delightful stcries enriched by Mr. Caldecott's inimitable pencil. I'athos. humour, 
 refinement, a clear insight, a gentle sympathy inform these pages, which form a gem-like picture. There are 
 parts which are as good as Steme in their humour, and others with a tender pathos of which Dicken> might have felt 
 proud. But there is nothing imitative." — Birmingham Daily Post. 
 
 JULIANA HORATIA EWING AND HER BOOKS. 
 
 BY 
 
 HORATIA K F. GATTY. 
 
 With a portrait by George Reid, R.S.A. Sixteen Illustrations irom Sketches b» 
 
 J. H. Ewing, and a cover designed by Randolph Caldecott. 
 
 "All who have delighted in Mrs. Ewing's stories for children — and who has not?— will read with interest the 
 affecting memoir by her sister, Horatia K. F. Gatty, 'Juliana Horatia Ewing and her Books' (S.P.C.K.). Some 
 pretty woodcuts and an excellent portrait illustrate the text." — Saturday Review. 
 
 ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY EDMUND EVANS, RACQUET COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.