a specially clear one, when the loud caw of a very bored looking crow
sitting on the wall just above my head made me jump as I have seldom in my
life jumped, and reminded me that I was trespassing. Clearly my nerves
were all to pieces, for I gathered up my skirts and fled through
the door as though a whole army of ghosts and cousins were at my heels,
nor did I stop till I had reached the remote corner where my garden was.
"Are you enjoying yourself, Elizabeth?" asked the mocking sprite that calls
itself my soul: but I was too much out of breath to answer.

This was really a very safe corner. It was separated
from the main garden and the house by the wall, and shut in on
the north side by an orchard, and it was to the last degree
unlikely that any one would come there on such an afternoon.
This plot of ground, turned now as I saw into a rockery,
had been the scene of my most untiring labours. Into the cold
earth of this north border on which the sun never shone I had
dug my brightest hopes. All my pocket money had been spent
on it, and as bulbs were dear and my weekly allowance small,
in a fatal hour I had borrowed from Fraulein Wundermacher,
selling her my independence, passing utterly into her power,
forced as a result till my next birthday should come round
to an unnatural suavity of speech and manner in her company,
against which my very soul revolted. And after all,
nothing came up. The labour of digging and watering,
the anxious zeal with which I pounced on weeds, the poring
over gardening books, the plans made as I sat on the little
seat in the middle gazing admiringly and with the eye of faith
on the trim surface so soon to be gemmed with a thousand flowers,
the reckless expenditure of pfennings, the humiliation of my
position in regard to Fraulein Wundermacher,--all, all had