Produced by Susan Skinner, Chris Curnow, Pamela Patten and
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[Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER
VOL. XX.—NO. 1005.] APRIL 1, 1899. [PRICE ONE PENNY.]
[Illustration: THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH
by Isabella Fyvie Mayo.]
_All rights reserved._]
CHAPTER I.
A lady came out of a little house set in the corner of a quiet street
on the northern edge of Bloomsbury. The house she left was tiny and
odd-shaped, and seemed to have been built as an afterthought on a
remnant of ground spared from the erection of its high, solemn,
symmetrical neighbours, which towered two storeys above it. Among the
dark dingy brick houses its front alone was painted, and it was also
rounded in form, probably to give a little more space to its small
rooms. It had a verandah too, whose top made a sort of balcony for the
upper windows, and the whole was decorated by bright hardy creepers.
As the lady left the house, she proceeded to cross the road. About
midway she paused, and looking back, she smiled and nodded to somebody
not very distinctly visible. Then something moving at the French window
opening on the verandah caught her eye. This was a maid-servant with a
little child, and the lady, nodding with greater energy and kissing her
hand, hurried on her way.
She had a light, swift step, and a bright mobile face. But it bore a
strain of repressed, intense emotion scarcely to be understood in a
pretty young woman with a houseful of living treasures.
On and on she went, threading her way across squares and along
streets, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, her
thoughts evidently turned within herself. At last she emerged at the
south-western side of Bloomsbury, into a street chiefly taken up
by shops and hotels. She slackened her pace a little, as one may if
one wishes to prolong a pleasant hope which may not be crowned by
realisation.
She paused opposite a shop window, wherein, backed by a half-curtain of
heavy green serge, stood three low easels. Two bore sketches, one of
an opal dawn over a mass of low red roofs; the other of a lurid sunset
above a forest of spires and masts rising from a purplish mist. But the
centre easel was empty.
She gave a slight exclamation, and hastily entered the shop. She was
not long inside. When she came out, she had her purse in her hands.
Though she had a smile on her lips, the emotion in her face was but
more vivid, as if fuel had been added to the inner flame.
She did not retrace her steps to the little corner house with the
creeper-draped verandah. She went on westward, through the quiet
streets at the back of Oxford Street until she reached a long, decorous
thoroughfare many of whose doors were adorned with brass plates bearing
the names of well-known doctors. Again she slackened her pace and
looked at her watch.
Very slowly did she walk past one great house, with heavy stained
glass in the dining-room windows, and an elaborate gorgon’s head
for the brass knocker. As she drew near the broad white steps, the
door, which bore the name of Dr. Thomas Ivery, opened, and a woman
came out, hastily drawing a veil over tear-stained features. With a
sudden movement, our pedestrian stepped forward and arrested the staid
man-servant in the very act of closing the door.
“Can I see Dr. Ivery?” she asked.
“Well, ma’am”—the well-trained servant hesitated—“his consulting hours
are just over. Have you an appointment with him?”
“No,” she frankly admitted. “But I think he may see me. Will you ask
him, please?—say that Mrs. Challoner of Pelham Street will be so
grateful if he can spare her a few minutes.”
“I will ask him, ma’am,” answered the man of the imperturbable face.
“Will you wait here for his answer?” And he showed her into the front
room with the stained glass windows, of whose glories in the deepening
gloom of the autumn afternoon little was visible save one waving streak
of crimson like a stream of blood.
To her tense mood, the room seemed heavy with the atmosphere of doom.
She wondered whether the apartment had any other uses, whether a happy
family ever gathered about the great hearth, or a merry party ever sat
around the long dining-table. There were big pictures on the walls,
though all she could see of them was spaces of darkness and mystery
enclosed by heavy gilt frames. A bust stood ghostly in the furthest
corner.
She had not to wait long. The man-servant threw open the door.
“Dr. Ivery will see Mrs. Challoner,” he announced, as if she were one
of a waiting group. “Will you walk this way, madam.”
She followed him along a gloomy passage. He ushered her into a room,
cheerful and homelike compared with that she had left. This got the
last of the day’s brightness through a big west window overlooking some
open space; it was lined with books; a great blue jar filled with red
flowers stood in one corner; one or two homely crayon portraits and
weak little water-colours hung immediately behind the doctor, as he sat
in front of his desk.
“Mrs. Challoner?” he said, half-interrogatively. He had never seen her
in walking dress before. There was a suggestion of anxiety in his tone.
“Yes, Mrs. Challoner, Pelham Street,” she humbly explained. “Will you
forgive me, sir, and tell me if I am doing wrong. I so want to speak to
you about my husband.”
“Ah, your husband,” echoed the doctor. “Yes, yes—nothing wrong anew, I
hope.”
“Oh, no,” she answered. “All is going on well, so well that I know——”
she paused. “I want to consult you privately, Dr. Ivery. I could get
no opportunity while Charlie was so very ill, and since he has been
better only the young doctor has come, so I thought if I might visit
you here—if you will forgive me?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Challoner, certainly. A private conversation with a
patient’s nearest friend is often as much a physician’s duty as writing
a prescription. Tell me just what is on your mind about your husband.”
Dr. Ivery was a tall spare man with a silvered head very high and full
at the top. His composed face softened as he met the eager searching
eyes of the young wife. This was a woman who must have the truth. He
thanked God inwardly that though the truth for her must be hard enough,
yet it was not the hardest!
“It is the future, sir,” she said, schooling her voice to absolute
calmness. “Charlie is already talking of returning to the office.”
“The season of the year is against him,” remarked the physician,
guardedly.
“But, apart from anything just now, sir,” she pleaded, “what do you
think of Charlie’s possibilities in the long run?”
She said the only words she could bear to say. It would have killed her
to ask, “Has Charlie any chance of life? Must Charlie die?”
The doctor paused. This was not because he had to extinguish hope, but
because he feared to fan it too much.
“My dear lady,” he said, “I am sure I need not tell you that such
symptoms as his are always serious and always mean that grave mischief
has been done. At the same time, apart from these lung troubles, his
general health is unusually good. The mischief seems so local, that if
he could get the right climatic conditions, I would incline to believe
that he may live as long and as happily and usefully as most of us.”
Mrs. Challoner’s face brightened.
“And are such climatic conditions to be found anywhere in Great
Britain?” she asked wistfully.
“I fear not,” said the doctor. “I was thinking of some of the colonies
in the Southern Hemisphere.”
“I thought so,” she answered with patient sadness. She and Charlie had
talked over these matters before. Even before his recent illness, her
husband had said that if he had known his own constitution earlier, he
would not have adopted such a profession as a solicitor’s, with all
the limitations which would involve a new professional training in any
change of sphere.
“Would there be any good for Charlie in a long, long sea voyage?” she
asked in the tone of one pleading for a dear life.
The doctor brightened.
“The very greatest good,” he said. “This is just one of the cases where
a sea voyage often gives a new lease of life. But we scarcely like to
suggest it to a young professional man—a young married man. We find
that an absolute rearrangement of life is often more feasible.”
“A sea voyage could be managed, Dr. Ivery!” cried Mrs. Challoner. “If
there is hope in it, it can be done—it shall be done!”
“To be of real service, it must be very long,” warned the physician.
“It shall be the very longest that is to be had,” she said. She had
risen from her seat. “I will talk over all details with my husband,”
she added. “And when you come, sir, you will support my arguments.”
“Certainly,” he said, “and most heartily too, now I am entitled to
do so. We must remember that we may have disappointment,” he added,
gazing-down at her eager face. “But I can assure you we shall have good
grounds to hope.”
“I must not detain you longer,” she said. “How blessed you are to be
able to make others as happy as you have made me.”
“I have often to make them sad,” he answered, shaking his head, “at
least, so far as we poor humans know what is gladness and what is
sadness. And Mr. Challoner is really doing well? My assistant always
gives favourable reports. And your boy? A bonnie boy! Why, who is
looking after him while you are so much absorbed in your husband?”
“Oh, he can be with us now since Charlie has been getting stronger!”
she answered. “And I can always trust him with Pollie. I don’t know
what I should do without her. She has been with us ever since we
married. I have been so much more fortunate than most of my friends.”
“Pollie has been more fortunate than some of your friends’ Pollies
probably,” laughed the doctor. “I shouldn’t wonder but you spoil her.”
“No, I don’t!” declared Mrs. Challoner, with a good housewife’s
indignation. “But I knew when I had a good servant, and I kept my place
open for her for six months during her mother’s last illness, and when
her invalid sister was attending the Free Hospital, I had her to stay
with Pollie. That is how we came to hear about you, Dr. Ivery. So I am
sure we have been trebly repaid. These poor people live in a little
damp cottage in Essex—I don’t wonder the family are sickly. Pollie
herself has grown into a different girl since she has lived in Pelham
Street.”
She spoke quite volubly. The doctor understood the nervous tension
thus suddenly relaxed. She scarcely knew what she was saying. Then she
recollected herself, smiled—the smile mounting to her eyes—for the
first time for many weeks, and modestly took her leave.
The doctor himself escorted her to his door, the watchful attendant
saying to himself, “There ain’t a many ladies, be they whom they may,
for whom the master does that.”
The physician returned to his study, thoughtful. He said to himself, “I
wonder how they are to manage this? Challoner has said enough to me to
show how necessary he felt a speedy return to business to be! I suppose
she is going to work some sort of little human miracle. How she lighted
up! I wish I could find such a miracle to be worked by some of my lady
patients, if it would waken them up thus. But I suppose each of us must
find his or her own miracles. They cost too much for any of us to be
able to get them for each other.”
Mrs. Challoner turned eastward with flying feet. Her one thought
now was, that at any cost this thing must be done. She felt herself
like a frail little ship which has but to get the wind behind it to
speedily reach its desired haven. Only she had got to steer it! If it
were wrecked, the fault would lie with her, and with her only. It is
something to have ever gone through such an hour of glorious life.
Henceforth, come what may, we know the secret of the faith which “can
remove mountains.” We know too that the great will of the universe is
with all things good and glad and hopeful, though we may fail to set
our little vessels where they can catch its current, or though they may
come to disaster on other vessels already foundered.
Still, she had another visit to make ere she went back to the little
house with the verandah.
This time she paused at a great house in one of the more important
Bloomsbury squares. On its portal it bore the sign of “St. George’s
Institute of Arts and Languages.”
She was admitted with smiles, for of old she had been familiar there.
She stayed inside fully half an hour. When she came out her face was
not less glad, but it was grave and set, as that of a sailor whose hand
is already on the wheel.
She had one more interruption of her homeward journey. She was not far
from Pelham Street, when she was suddenly greeted by a short, plump
lady richly dressed.
“Why, Lucy, you are so absorbed that I believe you would have passed
me, your very own sister!” cried the stranger.
They shook hands heartily.
“Have you been calling at our place?” asked Mrs. Challoner. “Didn’t
Pollie invite you to await my return? She knew I would not be much
later than this.”
“Oh, yes, she asked me to wait. ‘Her mistress would not like to miss
Mrs. Brand,’” said the lady, evidently mimicking Pollie’s tone. “She
was civil enough. I did sit down for a few minutes; but, as it was
plain there was some cast-iron rule against my getting upstairs to see
Charlie——”
Mrs. Challoner interrupted. “I had told her no visitors were to be
admitted during my absence,” she said, “and she knows that when I am
at home I allow nobody to go upstairs, not even Charlie’s great chum,
Wilfrid Somerset, without my going too. Charlie is so lively and
energetic that unless I am there to intervene and put on the brake, he
would take to delivering orations, and then in a moment all that he has
regained might be lost.”
“Well, I thought you might have made an exception of me,” remarked Mrs.
Brand. “You might have credited me with some sense, seeing that I am
your own sister—your only relative in London; it seemed hard to find
myself shut out by a servant.”
“I could not know you would call, Florence,” said Mrs. Challoner very
gently. She might have added, “since you have not called for more
than a week,” but she refrained, partly because she did not wish to
reproach, and partly because she was by no means sure that under any
circumstances would she have made an exception of Florence Brand.
“It does not matter,” Mrs. Brand answered. “I don’t suppose either of
us lost much. But if Charlie is so weak and so unfit to take care of
himself, it’s a bad outlook for you, poor dear, and you are worn to a
thread paper already.”
“Won’t you turn back with me, and have a cup of tea with us?” invited
the younger lady.
“No, thanks,” said Mrs. Brand. “Mr. Brand does not like me to be out
alone after dark, and already it will be dark before I get home. No,
never mind; I’ve heard how Charlie is and I’ve seen you and the boy,
and, by the way, Lucy, through having been left so much with Pollie, I
do believe little Hugh is catching her horrid Essex accent.”
“Well, then he must let it go again!” retorted Mrs. Challoner with some
spirit.
More than once she had silenced a reflection that her sister, with
her well appointed nursery and her lady “mother’s help,” with no duty
beyond attendance on the two little Brands, both older than Hugh, might
have invited a visit from her nephew while his father lay at death’s
door, and his mother and her solitary servant wrestled with sick
nursing and housewifery. She had said to herself that Florence had not
reflected on the struggle it was, and would have been quite ready to
give help if she had been asked for it. But that could not be, though
Lucy had conquered her insurgent independence sufficiently to give one
or two broad hints, which had fallen dead. Yet it did seem hard that
Florence, so slow to consider, should be so quick to criticise!
“Well, as things are going on so nicely, I suppose we shall see you at
our place soon,” said Mrs. Brand. “I should think you ought to take
Charlie for some drives before the weather gets cold. It would be a
good thing for him to have a real change. It might have saved much, if
only he had taken one in time. Jem and I are thinking of running down
to Brighton next Saturday. Jem can stay till Tuesday morning, and maybe
I’ll persuade him to leave me there for a day or two longer. It’s such
a rest to get away from one’s housekeeping and one’s children and one’s
callers! I can assure you I’m a very busy woman, Lucy,” she laughed,
“though I see by your face that you don’t believe it. I might well
envy you your nice homely little house, with only Pollie to control.
Why, our table decorations alone are a perpetual worry, and the cook’s
temper is awful. Ta-ta! Don’t bring Charlie to see us till I am sure to
be back at home.”
They parted and Lucy Challoner went on. The little interview had not
done her good. She began to feel that she was very tired—tired in body
now, and tired in soul, with the sense of a steep duty stretching
before her.
But when she turned the corner of Pelham Street, and saw the cheery
light streaming from the windows both within and above the verandah,
her feet felt lighter. Ten minutes later, presiding over the little
tea-table drawn up beside her husband’s couch, Lucy Challoner was
again her dauntless self, prepared to extract its uttermost from every
pleasant possibility.
She brought out her purse with a dramatic air of mystery.
“Do you see this little article, Charlie,” she said. “Look at it!”
“Why, it’s the old purse I gave you during our honeymoon,” he answered
in his invalid’s whisper. “Poor little girl, if I had been able to put
more in it, it would have been worn out by this time!”
“Oh, never mind that nonsense,” said she. “This purse held five
shillings when I went out this afternoon. What do you think it holds
now?”
“Not more than four-and-sixpence I hope,” he replied, “for you have
been out so long, that I trust you have treated yourself at least to a
sixpenny bus fare.”
“Sir, do not trifle,” she said demurely. “Guess again. I brought home
more, not less. You give it up? Well, this purse now contains three
pounds eight shillings. I did not spend a penny, and Messrs. Mapp have
sold my little sketch of the old Surrey mill and have handed me three
guineas for it.”
“And a very good bargain somebody got,” remarked Charlie, who was
straightway called “an ungrateful man.” “I should like to keep all your
pictures to myself,” he said.
“That is selfish,” she answered, with quaint affectation of dogmatism.
“Don’t you know that the true purpose of a work of art is to be seen
and not merely possessed?”
Charlie laughed. “I would not grudge it to a gallery,” he said. “But if
some fellow has got to possess it, I’d rather I was that fellow.”
“But that wasn’t in our bond,” persisted his wife. “Don’t you remember
that when I gave up teaching to marry you, sir, I bargained that I
might sell any sketch I did, provided that I never sketched when I
ought to be doing my duty to you?”
“Nevertheless you forgot to put in a clause that I was not to buy
them,” laughed Charlie. “I suppose my money is as good as any other
body’s—always provided I have any,” he added, with a little sigh.
“You are so mercenary!” cried Lucy. “Do you think I cared only for
the money—though I did want to be able to give you real presents,
sometimes. No, sir! Let me tell you I care also for my art. I wanted it
to gain criticism—I desired it to pass tests.”
“A gentle hint that my art opinions are not worth much!” said Charlie
archly.
“A gentle hint that you have such foolish opinions about a certain
woman, that, provided five pound notes were in plenty, you would give
her one for an outlined cube set on four sticks, and inscribed with the
legend ‘This is a pig!’” said Lucy.
“But now, Charlie,” she went on, with a sudden change of tone from
the assumed merriment in which they had both innocently disguised
the anxieties lying in both breasts, “I have got a piece of news for
you—very important, good news. You are to go for a long sea voyage. It
is all arranged. Dr. Ivery says so.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“But it is impossible, Lucy,” said the young husband gravely. “And that
being so, it is well for us to remember that, could I get it, it might
do me no real good.”
“But you can get it,” Lucy cried, almost passionately. “Of what good
are our savings, small as they are, if they are not to help you to—to
recover health,” she said with a gasp.
“Lucy, my dear,” said Charles Challoner, putting his arm about her and
drawing her close to him, “could it do me good to go away, knowing
that every day of the holiday brought want nearer to you and the
boy and myself? Would not all the good I might gain be undone if I
had to return home and begin life again under the hardest and worst
conditions, struggling for each day’s bread, dreading lest another
attack might leave you not only a widow, Lucy, but penniless, perhaps
in debt?”
“Ah, I own all that, Charlie,” she admitted, gently withdrawing herself
from his clasp that she might gaze straight into his eyes, “but I have
thought it all out, and planned everything, so that this shall not be.
You must arrange for a year’s leave of absence from your office; I
think the firm will give you that—you leaving your salary to be paid to
whoso shall temporarily undertake your work.”
“And am I to lose the little business I am gathering up for myself—my
three or four private clients?” he asked piteously, as if he felt
himself already yielding to the sweet dominance of her will.
“Transfer them to your _locum tenens_, too,” she said, “or even lose
them; something may have to be sacrificed. Then from our little hoard
take what will suffice for a thoroughly long sea-voyage—there must be
no doing it in a half-and-half way. And leave the rest in the bank.”
“The rest in the bank!” echoed poor Charlie. “There won’t be much to
leave after paying for a long journey for you and me and the boy. And
it will cost something to keep the house going while we are away, or we
should lose dreadfully if we tried to sell leasehold and furniture at a
pinch.”
“Dearest old boy!” said his wife, laying her cheek upon his. “Why will
he interrupt? and why will he give himself needless worries? I am to
stay at home with the boy and to keep the house going. Did he think I
was to be dragged all over the world—I and our poor little pet?” (She
could speak so, never flinching, while shocks of pain shook her heart
at the thought that no such journey was possible, but only this awful
loneliness of which she would not dare to begin to think, until Charlie
should be fairly gone, and it was too late to call him back!) “And
I’ll whisper it to you, Charlie, that just as I added three guineas to
my five shillings this afternoon, so I trust when you come back you
will find something—not much maybe, and yet something—added to the
nest egg you will leave in the bank. For, Charlie, at the St. George’s
Institute, they are prepared to forgive me for deserting them for you,
and they will take me on again as a teacher, and Mr. Mapp says he
thinks my sketches will sell very well, and he advises me to try for a
little book-illustrating.”
“And what will become of Hugh, while you are at the Institute?” asked
Charlie.
“I have thought it all out,” she answered. “He shall go to that
nice kindergarten near the church. Its hours are the same as at the
Institute. I shall take him when I go, and call for him on my return.”
“I did not marry you for all this, Lucy,” observed Charlie, looking
earnestly at her.
She knew what he meant. But she lightly turned aside the pathos of his
words.
“I don’t believe you thought I had it in me,” she said. “There isn’t
very much in me, perhaps—just enough to hold out for a little while
till my husband comes back, robust and strong.”
“You must have been thinking over this for some time, Lucy?” he
remarked.
“For a few days,” she answered. “And to know myself laying little plans
and setting little traps, with you so innocent of them, has made me
feel quite guilty of keeping a secret.”
“Poor little girl!” said Charlie, “and I too had my secret. At least
your secret has turned something into a secret, by investing a trifle,
which I did not mention to you, with a significance it did not have
before. If you had not told your secret, you would never have heard
mine!”
They paused in their talk, for Pollie came into the room to remove the
tea-things.
“Did you tell her anything of your plans?” asked Charlie, motioning his
head towards the door as the maid closed it behind her.
“Certainly not,” Lucy answered. “Is it likely I would tell her of my
schemes before you heard them? What makes you ask such a question?”
“Because she looks so solemn and constrained,” he answered, “as people
do when they know something important is in the air.”
(_To be continued._)
VARIETIES.
MORE INFORMATION WANTED.
_Possible Boarder:_ “Now, I have enjoyed my dinner very much, and if it
was a fair sample of your meals I should like to come to terms.”
_Landlady:_ “First of all may I ask if it was a fair sample of your
appetite?”
PAINTING FOR POSTERITY.—“What a folly,” said Sir Edward Burne-Jones,
on one occasion, “to talk of only painting for posterity. Posterity
is only one more drop in the ocean of time. Indeed, I never pass the
chalk-artist working upon the pavement, but I think, ‘Ah, brother, my
pictures can last but a day longer than yours.’”
CLASSICAL MUSIC.
“Mamma, what is classical music?”
“Oh, don’t you know? It is the kind you have to like, whether you like
it or not.”
AN ORIENTAL PROVERB.
“Good striving
Brings thriving.
Better a dog that works
Than a lion that shirks.”
A SOURCE OF WEAKNESS.—A frequent source of weakness lies in the notion
that what we do at the moment does not matter much, because we shall be
able to alter and mend and patch it as we like by-and-by.
MELANCHOLY WORDS.
The words “no more,” it was once remarked by Madame de Staël, both in
sound and sense are more expressive of melancholy meaning than any
others in the English language.
If not before these, at least second in the scale may be placed the
single word “alone,” and next to this “never.”
TWO HALVES MAKE A WHOLE.
_Mother:_ “Bobbie, how many sisters has your new schoolfellow?”
_Bobbie:_ “He has one, mamma. He tried to make me believe he had two
half-sisters, but he doesn’t know that I’m studying fractions.”
A RAISED FLOWER-BED.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
One of the ancient trees upon my lawn having fallen into a dying
condition, I was reluctantly compelled to give an order for its removal.
I was sorry to part with an old favourite, and also I was a little
puzzled as to how the great bare place left by its wide-spreading
branches was to be filled up. At last an inspiration came, “We will
have a raised bed of flowers and shrubs!”
It was a recollection of my youth, for I could recall rustic beds, tier
upon tier, in a certain garden in which I had played when a child.
I sketched for my proposed bed a plan which was skilfully carried out,
and all through the summer it has been so ornamental, and so much
admired that I have had it photographed, and will now endeavour to
describe how it was made, so that, if desired, it can be imitated, or
at any rate the idea can be adapted, with such variation of size and
shape as may be thought desirable.
Fig. 1 gives a section view of details. Fig. 2 shows the bed finished,
and ready to receive the plants.
A tree stem about four feet six inches in length was firmly sunken
about eighteen inches in the ground; upon it was placed half of a
butter tub, obtained from the grocer. When this was nailed to the
tree-stem, the outside of the tub was covered with pieces of bark and
small rustic branches, which concealed its plebeian origin.
A young larch tree was cut into lengths of three feet six inches, and
these were pointed at one end and driven firmly about eighteen inches
into the soil.
The bark being left on these logs gives them a rustic effect, but of
course any wood can be used and some bits of bark nailed on will answer
almost as well. Inside the ring of logs good soil should be filled in
and strips of turf inserted in the joinings of the logs to prevent the
earth from falling through.
Half logs, with the bark on, should be placed round the outer edge of
the bed in order to keep the soil in its place, the earth being filled
in to form a sloping border for low growing plants and shrubs.
In the centre tub the photograph shows the rice paper plant (_Aralia
Sieboldii_), which is hardy and handsome at all seasons of the year.
The pretty Ivy-leaved Toad-flax and Creeping Jenny droop over the edges
of the rustic work, and the other plants, of which I subjoin a list,
are as varied as possible in form and colour.
Golden Privet and Juniper, the silvery leaves of the variegated
periwinkle and veronica, the silver carex, and the flowers that supply
other colours make the bed an extremely pretty feature in our garden
throughout the year, all the plants I have mentioned being perfectly
hardy.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
One advantage of such an arrangement in small gardens is, that it
affords the opportunity of growing a large variety of plants in a
comparatively small space of ground. Another advantage is that the
gardening work can be done without much stooping.
Although my flower-bed had to pass through the test of an exceptionally
dry summer, not a single plant died; on the contrary all grew
luxuriantly and gave me the pleasant feeling that they were vigorous
and enjoying the warm sunshine which brought out the rich tints of
their leaves and flowers.
[Illustration: THE RAISED BED.]
LIST OF PLANTS IN RAISED FLOWER-BED.
_Abelia Rupestris_, and Rice Paper Plant, _Hypericum Calycinum_,
various Ivies, Golden Privet, Variegated Periwinkle, _Fuchsia Elegans_,
Dwarf Retinospora, _Thujopsis Dolabrata_, _Cedronella Cana_, Golden
Juniper, _Cotoneaster Buxifolia_, _Bambusa Fortunii-Variegata_, Silver
Carex, _Yucca Filimentosa_, _Crucianella Stylosa_, _Linum Perenne_,
Ivy-leaved Toad-flax, Creeping Jenny.
ELIZA BRIGHTWEN.
ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.
BY JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of “Sisters
Three,” etc.