"Mamma is in the garden," said Bell, with that hypocritical pretence
so common with young ladies when young gentlemen call; as though they
were aware that mamma was the object specially sought.

"Picking peas, with a sun-bonnet on," said Lily.

"Let us by all means go and help her," said Mr Crosbie; and then they
issued out into the garden.

The gardens of the Great House of Allington and those of the Small
House open on to each other. A proper boundary of thick laurel hedge,
and wide ditch, and of iron spikes guarding the ditch, there is
between them; but over the wide ditch there is a foot-bridge, and at
the bridge there is a gate which has no key; and for all purposes of
enjoyment the gardens of each house are open to the other. And the
gardens of the Small House are very pretty. The Small House itself
is so near the road that there is nothing between the dining-room
windows and the iron rail but a narrow edge rather than border, and
a little path made with round fixed cobble stones, not above two
feet broad, into which no one but the gardener ever makes his way.
The distance from the road to the house is not above five or six
feet, and the entrance from the gate is shut in by a covered way.
But the garden behind the house, on to which the windows from the
drawing-room open, is to all the senses as private as though there
were no village of Allington, and no road up to the church within a
hundred yards of the lawn. The steeple of the church, indeed, can be
seen from the lawn, peering, as it were, between the yew-trees which
stand in the corner of the churchyard adjoining to Mrs Dale's wall.
But none of the Dale family have any objection to the sight of that
steeple. The glory of the Small House at Allington certainly consists