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ferns; from the other, my little green friend the paroquet depends, and swings in state in his brass cage. There is a wide open brick fireplace, with logs of wood ready to hand, and if you want a fire it is the easiest thing in the world (in theory) to be your own Cinderella and build it up. When I come home from my afternoon ride I often come upstairs and practise, for I have a private piano up here. Clare is generally lying down before dinner (her health requires it, especially if she has a new novel), and I find that good Mrs. Mead has lit my fire and put the tea-things in the window and boiled the kettle on my own hearth, and it all looks so comfortable and homely that I don't know whether I am a hopeless sybarite or a comfortable hermit in the desert. A bed of violets is in full blossom under the windows, and as for the neighbours, they are reduced to a condition of silent despair by the appearance of Clare’s auricula beds. Some people call these pretty prim blossoms ‘dusty millers,’ but to my mind they are more like very fine ladies in powder and plush and patches, who have come to make a formal call on their country cousins.

“In our little community it generally happens that any bit of news is introduced as a secret. This has much the same effect as writing ‘urgent’