subject during our return journey in the train, resolved that, next year,
we ourselves would possess a houseboat, a smaller houseboat, if possible,
than even the one we had just seen. It should have art-muslin curtains
and a flag, and the flowers about it should be wild roses and forget-me-
nots. I could work all the morning on the roof, with an awning over me
to keep off the sun, while Ethelbertha trimmed the roses and made cakes
for tea; and in the evenings we would sit out on the little deck, and
Ethelbertha would play the guitar (she would begin learning it at once),
or we could sit quiet and listen to the nightingales.

For, when you are very, very young you dream that the summer is all sunny
days and moonlight nights, that the wind blows always softly from the
west, and that roses will thrive anywhere. But, as you grow older, you
grow tired of waiting for the gray sky to break. So you close the door
and come in, and crouch over the fire, wondering why the winds blow ever
from the east: and you have given up trying to rear roses.

I knew a little cottage girl who saved up her money for months and months
so as to buy a new frock in which to go to a flower-show. But the day of
the flower-show was a wet day, so she wore an old frock instead. And all
the fete days for quite a long while were wet days, and she feared she
would never have a chance of wearing her pretty white dress. But at last
there came a fete day morning that was bright and sunny, and then the
little girl clapped her hands and ran upstairs, and took her new frock
(which had been her "new frock" for so long a time that it was now the
oldest frock she had) from the box where it lay neatly folded between
lavender and thyme, and held it up, and laughed to think how nice she
would look in it.

But when she went to put it on, she found that she had out-grown it, and