warmth than flattery. Bless me, ma'am, I'm right glad to see you;
but how old you be!'

'I must come home to learn how to grow young, Gervas,' said she,
smiling; 'I hear Betty is as youthful as my aunt here.'

'Ay, ma'am, Betty do fight it out tolerablish,' was the reply to this
compliment.

'Why, Gervas, what's all that wilderness? Surely those used to be
strawberry beds.'

'Yes, ma'am, the earliest hautboys; don't ye mind? My young Lord
came and begged it of me, and, bless the lad, I can't refuse him
nothing.'

'He seems to be no gardener!'

'He said he wanted to make a Botany Bay sort of garden,' said the old
man; 'and sure enough 'tis a garden of weeds he's made of it, and
mine into the bargain! He has a great big thistle here, and the down
blows right over my beds, thick as snow, so that it is three women's
work to be a match for the weeds; but speak to him of pulling it up,
ye'd think 'twas the heart out of him.'

'Does he ever work here?'

'At first it was nought else; he and that young chap, Madison, always
bringing docks and darnel out of the hedges, and plants from the
nursery gardens, and bringing rockwork, and letting water in to make