charwoman, and she suffered many inquiries on our part as to the
names, ages, and peculiarities of our predecessors. As she had
'charred' for them, she was able to satisfy our curiosity to a
considerable extent, and then great was the pleasure of retailing to
our mother, as she sat knitting in the twilight, the anecdotes we had
collected of 'the little Russians.'

"'The Little Russians' certainly did much to cement our attachment to
Reka Dom. Their history was the history of our home. It was the
romance of the walks we played in, the swing we sat in, the gardens we
tended every day. To play at being the little Russians superseded all
other games. To 'pretend' that the little Russians were with us, and
to give dolls' entertainments in their honour, supplanted all former
fancies. Their gardens, by-the-by, were not allotted to their
successors without some difficulty, and the final decision involved a
disappointment to me. It seemed as if there could not be two opinions
as to the propriety of my having the letter M. But on further
consideration it appeared that as the remaining letters did not fit
the names of my brothers and sisters, some other way of distributing
them must be found. My mother at last decided that the letters of the
six beds were to be written on six separate bits of paper, and put in
a bag, and that one was to be drawn by each in turn. I still hoped
that I might draw the letter M, but it was not to be. That large and
sunny bed fell to my youngest brother, and I drew the letter I. Now
not only was the bed little more than a fourth of the size of that
which I had looked on as my own, but being very much in the shade, it
was not favourable to flowers. Then the four divisions of the letter M
afforded some scope for those effective arrangements which haunt one's
spring dreams for the coming summer; but what could be done with a
narrow strip with two narrower ends where the box-edging almost met,