lying in the shadow such as I see rarely now, and which cost us as
little thought or trouble in their perennial permanence, whereas the
conservatory was an endless grief and care, although superintended by a
thoroughly-taught English gardener, and kept up at unlimited expense.

My sister--for so I was taught to call Evelyn Erle--revelled in this
floral exclusiveness, but to me the dear old garden was far more
delightful and life-giving. I loved our sweet home-flowers better than
those foreign blossoms which lived in an artificial climate, and
answered no thrilling voice of Nature, no internal impulse in their
hot-house growth and development. What stirred me so deeply in April,
stirred also the hyacinth-bulb and the lily of the valley deep in the
earth--warmth, moisture, sunshine and shadow, and sweet spring rain--and
the same fullness of life that throbbed in my veins in June called forth
the rose. There was vivid sympathy here, and I gave my heart to the
garden-flowers as I never could do to the frailer children of the
hot-house, beautiful as they undeniably are.

"Miriam has really a _vulgar_ taste for Nature, as Miss Glen calls it,"
Evelyn said one day, with a curl of her slight, exquisite lip as she
shook away from her painted muslin robe, the butter-cups, heavy with
moisture and radiant with sunshine, which I had laid upon her knee. "She
ought to have been an Irish child and born, in a hovel, don't you think
so, papa?" and she put me aside superciliously. Dirt and Nature were
synonymous terms with her.

My father smiled and laid down his newspaper, then looked at me a little
gravely as I stood downcast by Evelyn.

"You _are_ getting very much sunburnt, Miriam, there is no doubt of