{385}

THE GIRL’S OWN
PAPER

[Transcriber’s Note: This Table of Contents was not present in the original.]

“OUR HERO.”
OUR LILY GARDEN.
IN THE TWILIGHT SIDE BY SIDE.
SOME NEW GUITAR MUSIC.
A VICE-REGAL DINNER-PARTY.
ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.
GOOD CHEER FOR WOMEN WORKERS.
OLD ENGLISH COTTAGE HOMES;
HIS GREAT REWARD.
A DREAM OF FAIR SERVICE.
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

“OUR HERO.”

By AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc.

“PUTTING UP THE PONY AND CART AT
A WAYSIDE INN.”

All rights reserved.]

{386}

CHAPTER XXV.

ROY BARON A FUGITIVE.

On the
edge of a
little clearing
in the
centre of the wood
stood a small
square charcoal-burner’s
cottage,
built of stone.
Near behind might be seen a good-sized
outhouse or woodhouse; and to one side
was the pile of slowly-burning charcoal.
Round and about were heaps of unsightly
rubbish and of blackened moss.

Nobody seemed to be within or at
hand. Jean opened the cottage door
without difficulty; and when they had
passed through, he bolted it in their
rear.

Then in the darkness he found his
way to a corner, struck a light with flint
and steel, made a “dip” to burn, and
groped anew. The one window was
closely shuttered.

Roy flung himself upon a small
bench, glad to get his breath, and
watched the other’s doings curiously.

“Are we to stop here?” he asked.
“But if the gendarmes come?”

“We must circumvent them,
M’sieu.”

“How? What are you going to
do?”

Jean was too busy to reply. He produced
a blouse, such as would be worn
by a French labouring lad, with shirt
and trousers to match, and brought
them to Roy. “M’sieu must change
his clothes,” he said. “Rest afterwards.”

“All right,” once more assented Roy,
though the cottage was swimming and
his ears were buzzing with fatigue. He
stood up, and promptly divested himself
of what he wore, to assume a different
guise. Jean brought from the same
corner a small bottle of dark liquid,
which he mixed with a little water in a
basin, and then dyed Roy’s hair and
eyebrows, thereby altering his look to
such an extent that even his mother
might almost have passed him by. Roy
laughed so much under this operation,
as to discompose the operator.

“Tenez, M’sieu! Taisez-vous, donc,
s’il vous plait! M’sieu, I entreat. I
assure Monsieur it is no matter for
laughter.”

“If you knew what it is to
be free again, you’d laugh
too,” declared Roy, and then
his merriment passed into a
big yawn. “But I’m awfully
sleepy.”

“Deux minutes, and Monsieur
shall rest. Monsieur is
hungry.”

Monsieur undoubtedly was,
though the craving to lie down
was even greater than the
craving to eat. Jean handed
him a hunch of bread and
cheese and a glass of milk;
and while Roy was occupied
with the same, he proceeded
to array himself in holiday
costume. He donned an old
and shabby but once gorgeous
coat, with standing collar and
gay buttons, which, as he informed
Roy, had many long years before
been the best holiday coat of his esteemed
grandfather.

“I go to the wedding of my niece,”
he remarked, with so much satisfaction
that, for a moment, Roy really thought
he meant it. “Does Monsieur perceive?
And Monsieur will be the boy—Joseph—who
goes with me in the little cart.”

“But where is the little cart?”

“All in good time, M’sieu. Now we
have for the moment to get rid of these
things.”

Jean rolled the discarded clothes into
a bundle, with which he disappeared out
of the cottage for a few minutes. Roy
conjectured that he might have buried
it in the bushes, or under heaps of black
rubbish, abundance of which lay ready
to hand. Jean then took Roy into the
outhouse, which was more than two-thirds
full of heavy logs and faggots
of wood—the winter supply—piled
together.

“Am I to get underneath all that,
Jean?”

“Oui, M’sieu. The gendarmes will
not easily find you there.”

“And you too?”

“Non, M’sieu. I betake myself to
the soupente.”

The soupente in a French cottage is
a kind of upper cupboard, a small
corner cut off from the one room, near
the ceiling, descending only half-way
to the ground, and reached by a ladder.

“And if they find you there——”

“M’sieu, if they find me, they will not
know me—see, in this dress! I am not
like the Jean who chopped wood at
Bitche. And I hope then to draw their
attention from M’sieu! Voyez-vous?”

Roy wrung his hand. “I don’t know
what makes you so good to me,” the
boy said huskily. “I—I don’t think
it’s fair upon you, though. And—I
can’t think why!”

“It is not difficult to tell M’sieu
why!” Jean looked abstractedly at
the roof of the wood-hut. “It is for the
sake of my mother—for the sake of that
kind Monsieur le Capitaine, who would
not leave her unhappy. Does M’sieu
remember—how Monsieur le Capitaine
regarded my mother that day?”

Roy remembered—and understood.

“Now, Monsieur! We may not lose
time. The light grows fast.”

Jean pulled down and hauled aside
logs and masses of wood, making a kind
of little cave or hollow far back, where
Roy could creep in and lie close to the
wall. Jean wrapped round him an old
coat, for warmth; and then, when he
had laid himself down, threw light
black rubbish over him as an additional
security, before carefully heaping up
anew the logs and faggots, till not the
faintest sign remained of any human
being beneath. Jean did his utmost to
deface all tokens that the wood-pile had
been disturbed.

“M’sieu must lie still,” he said.
“On no account must M’sieu move or
speak. If by chance I should have to
go away, M’sieu must wait till nightfall,
when the cart will come to take
M’sieu elsewhere.”

“But I say, Jean—you must not get
into trouble for me,” called Roy, his
voice sounding far and muffled.

“Bien, M’sieu. Trust Jean to do
his best. Can M’sieu breathe easily?”

“Rather stuffy, but it’s all right.”

“Au revoir, M’sieu. I go to the
soupente. M’sieu will remain in the
bûcher, till I or my friend come again.”

Then silence. Jean returned to the
cottage, where he rinsed the basin which
had been used for dyeing purposes, put
things straight, unbolted the front door,
climbed up into the little soupente,
drawing the ladder after him, and there
laid himself flat, under a pile of loose
rubbish. Soon he was or pretended to
be asleep.

Roy’s sleep was no pretence. Despite
his hard bed, and the “stuffiness” of
the limited atmosphere which he had to
breathe, despite fear of gendarmes and
risks of discovery, he was very soon
peacefully sound asleep, and knew no
more for the next two hours.

Something roused him then. In a
moment he was wide awake; his heart
thumping unpleasantly against his side.

The gendarmes had come.

Roy of course could see nothing; he
could only hear; and he heard a good
deal more than might have been expected
from his position, since his
senses were quickened by the exigency
of the moment. Also, the men made a
good deal of noise, after the manner of
gendarmes. Roy imagined that three
or four of them must be there.

They made their way first into the
cottage, surprised to find the door on
the latch, and nobody within. The fact
of finding the door thus tended to allay
their suspicions, as Jean had hoped.
On the face of matters, nothing was
less probable than that fugitives hiding
within should not so much as have
drawn the bolt. They walked round
the one room, knocking things about
a little. One of them looked vaguely
about for a ladder, but seeing none
he did not trouble himself further as to
the soupente.

Then they left the cottage, and
entered the bûcher, where the wood
was solidly and firmly piled together,
as for the winter’s use. No signs here
of human life. Roy below the pile lay
motionless, every faculty concentrated
into listening. One of the men kicked
down a few faggots, and another pulled{387}
at a log. To Roy it sounded as if they
were making their way to where he
was. But the search stopped at last,
after what seemed to Roy a small century
of suspense, and they took themselves
off. He heard them mount their horses
and trot away.

“Safe!” murmured Roy, and in his
heart there was a fervent “Thank
God!” not spoken in words.

He wondered whether Jean would
come to him; but Jean remained
absent; and Roy obeyed orders, staying
where he was. Presently he
dropped asleep again, and remembered
nothing more for hours.

How many hours he had no means of
knowing. Where he lay, he was in
pitch darkness. When he woke, he
had the consciousness which we often
have after sleep, of a considerable time
having elapsed; but whether it was
now morning or afternoon or evening
he could not even guess. He only
knew that he was growing frightfully
weary of his constrained position, longing
to get out and exert himself. To
sleep more was not possible. He
waited, minute after minute, wondering
if the long slow day would ever come
to an end. At length a voice sounded—

“M’sieu!”

“All right,” called Roy.

“Can M’sieu wait a little longer? I
hope to get Monsieur out soon—after
dark. It is not safe before then.”

“I’ll wait, Jean. Only as soon as
possible, please.”

“Oui, M’sieu.”

Jean disappeared anew. Roy put a
question, and had no answer. He was
wildly hungry, but there was nothing to
be done except to endure.

The wisdom of Jean’s caution became
apparent. Before darkness settled down
the same party of gendarmes again
galloped up and sprang to the ground.
They walked as before through cottage
and shed, once more kicking the furniture
about. This time one of them found the
ladder, went up it, and stepped inside the
soupente; but Jean had betaken himself
to another hiding-place outside the
cottage, and the search bore no fruit.
The men entered the wood-hut again,
in a perfunctory manner, knocking
down a log or two carelessly, and using
one to another rough language as to
the escaped prisoner, which boded no
gentle treatment for Roy should he fall
into their clutches. Then they vanished,
and silence settled down anew upon the
scene.

“Not likely to come again, I hope,”
murmured Roy. “O I am tired of
this!”

One more hour he had to endure; and
then came the welcome sound of Jean
removing the wood-piles.

“Can M’sieu stand?” asked Jean.

Roy crept out slowly, made the effort,
and fell flat. Jean pulled him up, and
held him on his feet.

“All right, I’m only stiff,” declared
Roy. “They won’t come back, I
suppose.”

“Non, M’sieu.”

“Why, it’s night, I declare! Been
so dark in there, I didn’t know the
difference between night and day.
There, now I can walk.” Roy managed
to reach the cottage on his own limbs
unassisted. “What a desperately long
day it has been.”

“M’sieu has found it wearying, sans
doute.”

“But as if that mattered! As if
anything mattered—only to get away
safely!” Roy said energetically.
“Jean, you are a good fellow! Is
this for me to eat? I’m as hungry as
a bear! Jean, I shall always think
better of Frenchmen for your sake.”

“Yet M’sieu will doubtless fight us
one day.”

“I shall fight Buonaparte, not the
French nation. I like some of your
people awfully—some at Fontainebleau,
and some at Verdun. And Mademoiselle
de St. Roques most of all.”

“Oui, M’sieu. M’sieu had better
eat.”

“All right, I’m eating, and you must
too. Oh, lots of French have been as
good and as kind to us détenus as they
possibly could be. And I only know
one single lodging-house keeper who
behaved like a brute. Most of them
have been just the other way. Why,
they have kept on lodgers month after
month, out of sheer kindness, when they
couldn’t pay anything because no money
reached them from England. I know
all that! And I like the French—only
not Boney!”

Jean smiled to himself.

“Cependant, M’sieu, the army of the
Emperor is made of French soldiers.”

“Can’t help that,” retorted Roy.
“And they can’t help it either, poor
fellows—most of them. I say, this
cheese is uncommonly good. Where
did you manage to hide it away, so as
to keep it from the gendarmes? Jean,
were you long at Bitche? Tell me
about it.”

Jean was cautious. He evidently
preferred not to enter into details. It
was better for Roy’s own sake that he
should not know too much. It seemed,
however, that on Jean’s arrival at
Bitche, he had found one of the gendarmes
to be an old acquaintance; and
through this gendarme, not through his
soldier-friend, he had obtained a temporary
post in the fortress. A man who
did rough work, chopping and carrying
wood and so on, had fallen ill and had
gone home for a fortnight to a neighbouring
village. Meanwhile, Jean was
allowed to undertake his work.

This gave Jean a good opportunity to
study the fortress and to make himself
acquainted with the surrounding country.
He did not fully explain to Roy the
maturing of his plans during that fortnight,
nor precisely what those plans
had been. The careful manner in which
he avoided speaking of his soldier-friend
made Roy pretty sure that the said
friend had had some sort of hand in
aiding his escape; but he put no more
questions in this direction. Jean had
had two or three glimpses of Roy from
time to time; but he had held carefully
aloof, until he saw his way to action.
Then he contrived to be sent into the
yard just when the better class of
prisoners was assembled there; and the
rest Roy knew.

“Why was I sent to that upstairs
room?” demanded Roy.

“M’sieu, there were doubtless reasons.
It is sometimes best that one should not
know all the reasons that may exist,”
observed Jean meditatively. “What if,
perhaps, somebody had known of the
intended escape, and had tried by that
means to save M’sieu from danger?”

“Jean, was it you?”

“Non, M’sieu!”—decidedly. But
whether Jean spoke the truth on this
point, whether Jean might or might not
have had a hand in the wire-pulling
which led to that event, Roy had no
means of knowing. He felt that further
questioning would be unfair. He had
but to be thankful that he was free.

By the time hunger and thirst were
satisfied, Roy’s spirits had risen to
a pitch unknown to him during eight
months past. Then, the land being
shrouded in darkness, a rough little cart
drawn by a rough little pony and driven
by a charcoal-burner came to the door.
Roy spoke a few grateful words to him,
as well as again to Jean, for their
generous help. After which, he and
Jean started in the cart, taking a small
lantern with them.

This next stage of the journey meant
quicker and easier advance than that of
the night before. The pony was both
strong and willing; and all through the
hours of darkness they were getting
farther and farther away from Bitche.
By dawn of day the fear of pursuit was
immensely lessened. Even if the gendarmes
had overtaken them, they would
hardly have suspected the odd figure in
a smart old coat and ancient cocked hat
of being the temporary wood-chopper at
Bitche, or the black-haired boy in a
rough blouse of being their prisoner,
Roy Baron.

For greater safety, both that day and
the next, they found a retired spot in
which to hide, letting the pony loose to
browse and rest on some rough ground,
or putting up it and the cart at a wayside
inn, and calling for it later. One
way and another, the dreaded pursuit
was eluded; and, as day after day went
by, Roy felt himself indeed free and on
the road for Home.

“Why should you not come with me
to England, Jean? I can promise you
that you’d be well looked after there by
my friends,” urged Roy. He had
grown sincerely fond of this kind,
thoughtful Frenchman.

They were now fast nearing the coast,
and their next halting-place was to be
at a farm-house within sight of the sea.
There they would have to remain until
an opportunity should occur for Roy to
cross the Channel. Since he had no passport
he could not attempt to journey by
the ordinary routes. But even here Jean’s
resources did not fail, and the owners of
the said farmhouse were near relatives
of his own.

“Non, M’sieu. I should feel strange
in another country. Also—have I not
promised to let Monsieur le Capitaine,
and Monsieur votre Père, and Madame
votre Mère, hear of your safety? Could
I disappoint them?”

“But, I say, will it be safe for you to{388}
go back to Verdun? What if they find
out that you have helped me to get
away?”

“They will not find out, M’sieu. It
was known that I should leave Bitche
that night—and my friends will have
diverted suspicion from me. Moreover,
it is no such hard matter to make a little
disguise of myself—if need be.”

Then they reached the farm, and Roy
found himself among friends, ready all
to shield him for Jean’s sake. It was
decided that he should work as a boy
upon the farm, sufficiently to draw no
attention upon himself, since the waiting
for a passage might be long. Roy was
willing to be or to do anything, if only
he might at last escape to England.

The farmer’s eldest son, a soldier by
conscription in the army of Napoleon,
had been a prisoner in England; and
he, like Roy, had made his escape,
getting safely back to France. Roy,
immensely interested in this story, plied
the farmer and his wife with questions
as to the experiences of the young fellow
in an English prison—questions which
they were not loath to answer. They
had, of course, the whole story at their
fingers’ ends.

It was at a place called “Norman’s
Cross” that their Philippe had been
confined—somewhere not far from the
eastern coast of England. About seven
thousand prisoners of war, chiefly
Frenchmen, were there kept under close
surveillance. The prison and the barracks
were built on high land, healthy
enough—yes, certainly, as to that, the
farmer said—with plenty of fresh air.
And the prisoners were guarded more
by sentinels in all directions, than by
fortifications, walls, moats, or dungeons.

“Not like Bitche!” interjected Roy.

Well, no, certainly—Monsieur spoke
correctly. The place—Norman’s Cross,
and the old farmer made a funny sound
of these two words—was not precisely
like Bitche. As to arrangements,
Philippe had had no fault to find with
the food provided. It was good of its
kind; and cooks were chosen from
among the French prisoners by themselves,
being paid for their work of
cooking by the English Government.
Also, when Philippe fell ill, he found the
hospital well managed. A school for
prisoners was kept going; and several
billiard-tables as well as other amusements
were provided.

But, ah, the poor Philippe, he had
been unhappy in captivity! Was it not
natural? Had not Monsieur himself
experienced the same? He had longed
to be free—to return to his own country
once more. And though on the whole
the prisoners had been fairly well treated,
at all events in that particular place, yet
of course there had been cases of
roughness and of harsh treatment.
Moreover, there was much to make a
prisoner sad—the desperate gaming, the
perpetual duelling, among his fellow-prisoners
were of themselves sufficient.[1]
So, after more than a year of captivity,
always more and more hopeless, with no
token of the war drawing to a close, he
had at last resolved to make his escape.
And, through great dangers, privations,
difficulties, he had actually succeeded.

Where was Philippe now? Ah—pour
cela—he had rejoined his regiment, and
was again at his old occupation. Fighting,
fighting—who could say for how
long? Perhaps to be again taken
prisoner, and once again to be at
Norman’s Cross! Who could foretell?

(To be continued.)

OUR LILY GARDEN.

PRACTICAL AIDS TO THE CULTURE OF LILIES.

By CHARLES PETERS.

Lilium Brownii.

Japan is the home of lily culture. Not only
are the Japanese Islands rich in native lilies,
but their inhabitants, imbued with a love of
flowers, which to our Western minds is almost
incomprehensible, have introduced into their
country all the prominent plants of Eastern
Asia. And with a knowledge which we
possess in but a small degree, they have
modified and beautified both their own plants
and those that they have introduced from
foreign countries.

The culture of the lily in Japan has reached
a high stage of development, and most of
our best varieties of lilies owe their origin to
Japanese gardeners.

Foremost among the lilies of Japan is the
one which bears the name of its native place.
Lilium Japonicum Odorum is one of the very
finest of the lilies, and in the strength of its
perfume it is absolutely without a rival.

The true L. Japonicum, or, as it is now more
generally termed, L. Japonicum Odorum is
but little known in England, but an allied
species, L. Brownii, is well known, and though
not grown so frequently as it should be, it is
deservedly popular.

It has always been a question whether
L. Japonicum and L. Brownii are but varieties
of the same plant. Certainly there is a great
similarity between them, but there are points
in which the two plants differ and these
differences are very constant.

In Dr. Wallace’s little book on lily culture
the differences between these two lilies are
detailed in tabular form, and for ourselves we
are fully convinced that L. Brownii and
L. Japonicum are distinct but very nearly
allied species.

The bulb of L. Japonicum is white or
yellowish, but never brown. The scales are
narrow and are very loosely connected with
the base. The bulb is always rather loose and
the scales divergent, but good bulbs have a
very firm centre. The bulb of L. Brownii is
usually reddish and the scales are broad. The
base is very small, and the whole bulb has a
curious and very characteristic shape.

The shoot of L. Japonicum is greener and
blunter than that of L. Brownii. The shoot
of the latter lily very much resembles thick
asparagus.

During growth it is easy to distinguish
between these two lilies, for the stem of
L. Japonicum is green, while that of L. Brownii
is brown.

There is not very much difference in the
flowers of these lilies. L. Brownii often bears
three blossoms, and in one case, recorded in
The Garden, five blossoms upon one stem.
Two blossoms are very frequently present on
the same stem. We have never known L.
Japonicum to bear more than one blossom on
each shoot.

Lilium Longiflorum.

The flowers of L. Japonicum are a rich{389}
custard yellow while they are opening, but in
the fully expanded blossom the colour of the
interior is a rich creamy white. The pollen
is reddish brown. The exterior of the perianth
is thickly streaked with chocolate colour.
The scent of this flower is very strong,
resembling that of the Jasmine.

The flowers of L. Brownii never show the
deep yellow colour which is present in the
partially opened buds of L. Japonicum. The
pollen is deep brown and the exterior of the
blossoms is more streaked with brown than
are those of L. Japonicum. We cannot
recognise any difference in the smell of these
two lilies, but Dr. Wallace contends that the
smell of L. Brownii is only moderately strong,
like that of L. Longiflorum; while other
authors have denied to L. Brownii any scent
whatever!

There is but little reason in the naming of
any plant nowadays, and the foolish and
unscientific methods of naming plants after
some person who has discovered, or described,
or who has often done nothing more than
bought a specimen of the plant, is unfortunately
very rife. Scientists have tried and are
still trying to put down this absurd nomenclature,
but they are thwarted in every way by
gardeners and others. Mr. Jones, Nurseryman,
has just flowered a lily. He does not know
its name. What does he do? Does he trouble
to find out if the plant is known to science?
Not he! He labels it Lilium Jonesii. Mrs.
Smith, a very aristocratic lady and a great
patron of Mr. Jones, comes along, sees, admires
and buys that lily. She asks Mr. Jones to
send her the plant, and it arrives labelled,
“Lilium Jonesii var. Smithii.” So much for
gardeners’ floral nomenclature!

Can anyone tell us who is the Mr. Brown
after whom L. Brownii is named? As far as
we can find out that gentleman is quite
unknown to science. Perhaps some wag
might suggest that the name originated
through ignorance. The man who discovered
the lily—or rather who thought he had
discovered it, for the plant has been cultivated
in Japan for centuries—perceiving that the
colour brown was very characteristic of the
flower, wanted to name the lily with a Latinised
version of “The Brown Lily,” but his
classical education, having been somewhat
neglected, he knew not the Latin for brown,
so he named the plant Lilium Brownii or
Browni to cloak his ignorance.

As no one is certain of the origin of the
name Brownii, so no one knows the original
habitat of this species. All our specimens
come from Japan, but it is very doubtful
whether it is a native of that land.

Have you ever seen a clump of L. Brownii
in flower? Last July there was a bed of this
lily at Kew in full blossom, and as the weather
had been remarkably suitable to the plant, and
its blossoms had not been injured by rain, the
sight of that bed was one of the loveliest
sights we can remember.

This lily has lately become more popular
than formerly, but it is very far from enjoying
that universal admiration which it amply
deserves. One reason for its comparative
scarcity is its tendency to degenerate, a
tendency which we strongly suspect is due to
improper culture.

It is usually stated that this lily should be
grown in very light sandy soil. We have
grown it in such a soil and also in a strong,
well-manured, peaty loam—a soil as different
from a light sandy soil as can be well imagined.
Those lilies grown in the light soil became
diseased and died without flowering. Those
in the heavy soil grew strong and very tall,
never showed any trace of disease, and each
spike produced two perfect blossoms.

The depth of the colour of the exterior of
the blossoms varies with the amount of light
in which the lily is grown. Specimens grown
indoors usually have a pure white exterior.
The blossoms are very tender and are often
cankered by rain at the flowering time.

Both L. Brownii and L. Japonicum make
admirable pot plants, and their blossoms last a
long time as cut flowers.

The variety of L. Brownii called Leucanthum
lacks the brown coloration of the blossoms.
We cannot distinguish it from the ordinary
variety when grown indoors. There are several
other so-called varieties.

All the lilies which we have described are
natives of Asia, but now we come to one which
inhabits our own continent.

Lilium Candidum, the white, or Madonna,
or St. Joseph’s Lily, is unquestionably the lily.
And when we mention the lily, this is the
plant which is usually meant.

Common as this lily has been in English
gardens for very many centuries, it is not a
native plant, and has very rarely escaped from
cultivation. We have only once seen this lily
growing wild. This was in a wood in Surrey,
and it was probably a garden escape. There
was but one spike of blossoms in 1895 when
we first saw it. Next year it produced one
solitary flower, but since that period it has
entirely disappeared.

Why this lily has never become wild in
England is not very obvious, for though it
never seeds in our Island, it very rapidly
increases by off-sets formed round the bulbs,
and hundreds of these must be thrown away
yearly.

Perhaps it is that the lily is not really hardy
in our climate, and though it will flourish when
tended in the garden, it is unable to hold its
own in the strife with our native plants.

Where the white lily will grow, it is one of
the loveliest of garden plants. Always better
where it has been long established and undisturbed
for years, it is in old gardens that this
lily is seen in perfection.

Unlike the lilies we have already considered,
the Lilium Candidum bears from
four to thirty blossoms on each stem. It is
true that one very rarely sees an umbel of more
than ten blossoms, but a plant bearing only
this number is a very marked feature in a
garden.

This lily differs from every one of its
colleagues in many points. Its bulb which
we figured in our first part is very characteristic.
About the end of October the white
lily begins to throw up an autumn crop of
leaves. This alone marks it off from all other
lilies, for though one or two species do sometimes
send up a stray leaf or two in autumn,
none of them do so regularly. But with L.
Candidum the autumn leaves are never absent,
and they remain green and fresh till long after
the flower shoot has appeared.

The flowers of the white lily are very
different from those of L. Longiflorum and
its allies. They are very short, widely-expanded
and very numerous. The pollen is
yellow. The flowers have a pleasant though
rather strong perfume.

Though this plant has been grown for
centuries in gardens, there are but few varieties
of it.

One variety named Aureo-Marginatis has
its leaves bordered with golden-yellow and the
autumn growth looks very striking in winter.

Three other varieties are recognised.
Monstrosum or Flora-pleno, has double
flowers. But the flowers themselves never
develop, the bracts becoming a greenish-white.
It is an ugly and worthless plant and
is deservedly neglected. The two other
varieties are called peregrinus and striatum.
In the latter the flowers are streaked with
purple. Neither variety is of any value.

The white lily is one of the oldest of all
garden plants. It was certainly cultivated by
the Romans, and is in all probability the origin
of the “Fleur de Lys.”

If you turn up L. Candidum in any book of
gardening, you will find something like this:
“The Lilium Candidum will grow anywhere,
provided the soil is of a light sandy nature.”
If you follow this advice, you will probably lose
every one of your plants.

We cannot, alas, tell you how to grow this
lily to perfection, for the simple reason that
we cannot do so ourselves. We can only tell
you how not to grow it and how we have
obtained moderate success.

The bulbs must be planted early in autumn.
It is best to plant them in late August or
early September. If you defer planting till
December or later, the bulbs will not produce
an autumn crop of leaves, they will not send
up a flower spike next season, and will probably
lie rotting in the ground.

Except in very exceptional circumstances this
lily will not flower well the first year it is
planted, for it needs several years to accustom
itself to new surroundings.

When once this plant is established and
flowers well, it should never be disturbed.

The bulbs should be planted about a foot
deep. Often when the bulbs have been in the
ground for some years, they will work their
way to the surface. Even if this happens it
is best to leave them alone, if they flower well.
But if the blossoms begin to deteriorate,
take up the bulbs and replant them.

Now about the soil. L. Candidum won’t
grow in sand and does not like a sandy soil at
all. It must have a rich moderately heavy
loam of good depth. It is in the black heavy
loam of the Thames valley that we have seen
this lily at its best. It likes lime in the soil,
but dislikes peat.

If this lily is grown in light sandy soil, it
grows beautifully till about the middle of May.
Disease then commences and kills all your
lilies with rapid strides, so that out of one
hundred spikes you may get perhaps three
half-rotten flowers. This has been our
experience of growing this lily in the orthodox
way, and we have lost very many hundreds of
flowers through following the generally
received opinions.

Lilium Candidum makes a fairly good pot-plant,
if the pot in which it is placed is very
deep.

This plant is grown in nearly every cottage
garden, and is very cheap to purchase. About
ten shillings a hundred is the ordinary price of
the bulbs.

Since we wrote our account of the diseases
of lilies we have heard of a new method of
treating the bulbs of Lilium Candidum, when
year after year the spikes become diseased.
The bulbs are washed and then baked in a cool
oven. We have heard that though this method
does, to a certain extent, check the disease, it
very materially interferes with the growth and
blossoming of the plant.

Resembling L. Candidum in the form and
number of its flowers, but differing from it in
almost every other particular, the next lily,
“The Lily of Washington,” is a species which
taxes the resources of the lily-growers to their
utmost.

Lilium Washingtonianum is the first lily
which we meet with from the great Western
Continent. It inhabits California and the
North West, growing upon the rocks and
mountain slopes of its native home.

The bulb of this lily is different from that of
any other. It is long, oblique, and rhizomatous.
Its peculiar ovoid shape is due to the fact that
it grows at one end only. The flower-spike
always appears from near the growing end.
The far end of the bulb gradually decays as
the near end grows. Bulbs of this lily are
often five or six inches long and two inches
broad. The only other lily which bears a bulb
in any way resembling this is L. Humboldti, a
native of the same places.

The leaves of L. Washingtonianum are{390}
arranged in whorls, and are quite different from
any other Eulirion except Lilium Parryi, the
next species.

The flowers are borne in a dense raceme.
Good specimens often bear as many as twenty
or thirty blossoms, but only too commonly
but one or two flowers are borne on each stem.

Individually the flowers are not much, being
small, thin, and of a pale purple, fading to the
deeper shades of purple. The pollen is yellow.
There is a variety of this species, called
Purpureum, in which the flowers are upright.
In this type the upper flowers look upwards,
the middle ones are horizontal and the lower
flowers droop. Although the variety is called
Purpureum, the flowers are by no means
always purple, but vary from pure white to
deep violet.

Beautiful as this lily is when seen in perfection,
we cannot regard it otherwise than as
a fraud. It is one of the most difficult to
grow; it is very liable to disease; it rapidly
degenerates, and it is expensive. The bed of
these lilies at Kew was the least effective of
all the groups of lilies.

If you wish to grow this lily, you must
carefully study its native climate, and the
habits of the plant when at home.

It is a moderately hardy lily, but will not
stand excessive frosts. Neither will it stand
great heat. For this reason the bulbs should
be planted very deeply. In its native land the
bulbs live at the depth of twelve to thirty
inches below the surface, and though we do
not recommend so great a length as the latter,
twelve inches should be the minimum depth
at which the bulbs are planted.

A very rich soil is required, but sharp
drainage is essential. The latter may be
obtained by mixing gravel with the soil.

Whatever you do, the lilies will probably
fail, or if they do live, they will give you one
or two poor blossoms to repay you for your
trouble.

In pots the culture of this lily is rather more
satisfactory. The pots must be of good depth
and sharp drainage is essential.

The last group of the Eulirions contains
three lilies which possess drooping bell-like
flowers.

Lilium Parryi is an American species coming
from the same place as L. Washingtonianum.

It is a little lily with citron-yellow coloured
blossoms and deep orange pollen-grains.
The blossoms, of which there are rarely more
than three on each stem, are small but pretty
and curious.

L. Parryi should be grown in the same way
as L. Washingtonianum. It is a difficult
plant to flower, but is more satisfactory than
its showy ally.

It is rather a rare plant and has not been
grown in England for very long.

The second of the drooping Eulirions is also
yellow. It is a native of Nepaul and takes its
name, L. Nepaulense, from its native place.

This lily in its growth resembles the other
Himalayan lilies, especially Lilium Wallichianum.
It is not very commonly grown in
this country, but it is an interesting species
and deserves more attention than it has
received.

It grows at the height of five and ten
thousand feet, and so should prove as hardy
in our gardens as L. Giganteum has done.
But its hardiness, as far as we are concerned,
remains to be proved.

The flowers are about the size of those of
L. Candidum, but are of a deep yellow colour,
deeply striped and spotted on the interior with
rich purple. The flowers are drooping and
somewhat resemble those of L. Giganteum in
form, but they are shorter, thicker and more
revolute. We have never seen more than two
flowers on one stem. It requires similar treatment
to L. Wallichianum.

In The Garden for April 19th, 1890, was reproduced
a plate of “Lilium Napaulense var.
Ochroleuceum.” If this plate is accurate, this
variety is indeed a fine lily, being yellowish-white
on the exterior with a deep primrose
inside. To our minds this plate recalls
L. Brownii more than any other variety of
lily that we are conversant with.

We must also go to a plate in The Garden
for the last of the nodding Eulirions. This
lily is L. Lowi, and hails from Burmah.

It resembles L. Nepaulense in shape and
growth, but the flowers are white, densely
spotted with rich claret-colour on the interior.

We have never seen the plant, and though
we tried hard to obtain a bulb of this species
we were unsuccessful in our quest. So of its
culture we know nothing.

(To be continued.)

IN THE TWILIGHT SIDE BY SIDE.

By RUTH LAMB.

PART VI.

CORN OR STRAW.

I think we may spend an hour profitably,
my dear girl friends, in contrasting the fair-seeming
part of our lives with that which is
real, true, and thorough.

It is good to be real in all things. True to
the core. In thought, word, and deed to be
the same human being as we wish our friends
to think us. On this subject of reality I will
tell you a story to begin with.

I dare say most of us joined in harvest
thanksgiving services after we returned home
last autumn; probably many of you joined in
preparing for them, and in arranging the
offerings sent by the congregations.

It was in autumn, but not this year, and in
city and village churches the “Feast of Ingathering”
was being kept. Daily songs of
thanksgiving were going up to the God of
harvest, in acknowledgment of the bounteous
provision He had made to supply the wants of
the teeming millions dependent on Him for
their daily bread.

A number of young people, mostly girls,
were busily engaged in decorating a church
for the Harvest Festival services on the
following day. Flowers, fruit, vegetables,
loaves of all sizes and corn in sheaves, or
shaped into miniature stacks, had been sent in
abundance. The poorest members of the congregation
were not the least willing givers.
They could not offer hot-house grapes or fruits
that were costly to mature, but they brought of
their best from cottage gardens and in no
stinted measure. The clean, ruddy carrots,
white turnips, cauliflowers in their nest of
green leaves, with other homely vegetables, the
best of their kind, added much to the picturesqueness
of the offerings.

The pulpit and font were bordered with
green moss on which were pretty devices in
scarlet berries, and below these hung a fringe
of oats, dainty-looking, light and graceful as
lace. There was a foot of this fringing to
finish when the material ran short.

“More oats wanted,” said the worker.
“Bring me some, please.”

But none were forthcoming.

“You have used them all,” was the answer.

“I cannot fill this space with anything else.
The design would be spoiled. There seemed
to be any quantity of oats, but this fringe takes
so much. Who will give us some more?”

Nobody seemed to know and time was
precious. At last a girl spoke, though in a
rather shamefaced way and in a hesitating tone.

“I know who would give us a bundle of
oat straw. We could pick out the best pieces
and by mixing them in with the unthreshed
corn, the length could be made up. There
would be some undoing and working up again,
but I don’t think anybody would notice the
difference.”

There was a short uncomfortable silence,
soon broken by the tremulous voice of the
youngest helper present—a mere child.

“Oh, we must not, we must not do that.
It would be horrid to pretend to give the
best corn that has been grown, to try and
show God how thankful we are, and then for
Him to see that there is ever so much empty
straw amongst it. It’s all very well to say
that we could make the fringe look as if it
were real corn and nobody would find out,
but God would know, and——”

The child speaker could not utter another
word. The trembling voice broke into a sob
that was more eloquent than the simple words
which had however gone home to the hearts
of the elder ones present.

“You are right, Nelly darling,” said one
of these as she drew her little friend to her
side and kissed her tenderly. “There must
be no ornamental shams amongst our thank-offerings
to God. We should not like our
neighbours to know that a portion of the fringe
ought to be labelled ‘Only straw,’ should we?”

“No, indeed,” was the answer from all the
rest, and one said, “How could we bear to
look at it and think that it was a miserable
counterfeit? Better no fringe than straw
where corn should be.”

To this all the workers heartily assented.
I do not remember how the little difficulty
was got over, but I know it was not by the
substitution of straw and empty husks for
corn. I know, too, that all present learned a
solemn lesson from the child who, out of the
fulness of her heart, spoke on the side of truth.

It was indeed a question of truth or untruth,
reality or pretence, which had so stirred
the young speaker. The child’s words and
the circumstances under which they were
uttered have often recurred to my mind during
intervening years, and I believe that in repeating
them I shall have done good service
to you, my dear girl friends.

Does not the very thought of that little
scene suggest self-examination? Are we not
inclined to ask ourselves how much of what
we may well call “straw” is mingled with
our offerings to God? When we kneel with
every appearance of devotion and even our
lips repeat the familiar words of praise, is our
worship always what it seems to be? Do not
you and I know that often, when the knee has
been bent and the head bowed in apparent
reverence, and when our lips have moved in
prayer or response, or our voices have rung
out tunefully in psalm or hymn, our hearts
have had little share in our seeming worship?

It has been a poor, mechanical thing in
which true reverence, penitence, faith and the
spirit of love, thankfulness and praise, have
been almost entirely absent. It has seemed to
our neighbours like true corn, but has been
mostly empty straw. I say mostly, because it{391}
would be hard to think that there was no
reality in it. Even amongst the straw cast
aside from the threshing machine, a few grains
of corn will always be found, each of which
contains the germ of a new and fruitful life.

If, in looking into our own hearts, we find
out the poverty of our worship, the barrenness
of our life service, the vast proportion of
coldness and indifference when compared with
the little spark of genuine love to God and
man which finds a place there, we cannot help
acknowledging that only a grain of true corn
is to be found here and there, amid the poor
straw of our daily lives.

Let us, nevertheless, take courage. A
single grain of true wheat may be the fruitful
parent of grand harvests to come—of a
handful of grain at first, each corn of which,
fructifying in turn, will yield more and more
until, as the years pass on, whole fields of
waving gold will mark their increase.

Look carefully, dear ones, for the little
grains of true corn in your natures. The
little grain of love to God will grow if you
let your hearts dwell on the thought of His
great love for you. If we do not think about
it we cannot realise it, but when we do, we
are so filled with a sense of its vastness, that
the living grains of love, gratitude, thankfulness,
praise, joy and longing to prove our love
by service, all fructify and become the parents
of glorious harvests in our future lives.

God’s love is such a generous love. He
gives everything to His children. In Christ,
God has given to you and me the very best
that even He could give. “Shall He not
also with Him freely give us all things?”
“No good thing will He withhold from them
that walk uprightly.”

Seeing then that God has given us the best
gift of all, and that all good things are
promised us on the one condition that we
walk uprightly, does it not become us to
expel all that is false from our worship and
our lives? To be true to the core? To let
words and actions be the harvest springing
from the living grain of holy love in our
hearts, watched, watered, cherished, guarded
assiduously, lest it should die and our worship
become a mere outward thing—straw, in
place of true corn, the poor sham which
human eyes could not detect, but the worthlessness
of which is known to Him who is of
purer eyes than to behold evil or to “look
upon iniquity”?

When we think of it, does it not seem
strange that “feigned lips,” wandering
thoughts, outward reverence without any real
adoration, can be permitted to pass current in
our minds? We know that, in God’s sight,
one little act of kindness done for His sake,
one spark of love fanned into a flame which
illumines the life of a fellow creature who is
sitting in darkness and the very shadow of
death; one honest effort after righteousness;
one sentence of true prayer uttered with a
sense of need by longing lips; one note of
true, spontaneous praise and thanksgiving
from a grateful heart; one cry for strength,
light and needed grace, spoken in the fewest
words that can express desire; each and all of
these, though small in a sense, are precious
and will not be forgotten. Mere grains they
may be, but they are living grains—the seeds
whence come grand harvests to God’s glory
and our own good.

I have taken the higher and more important
part of our subject first, but we will come
down to a lower level and speak a little about
carrying the same spirit of truth and thoroughness
into our everyday work.

I hope we all feel that we ought to render
of our very best to God, and to do this with
full sincerity of purpose and of heart. Surely
the same spirit should enter into all our
dealings and intercourse with our neighbour.
Whatever work may be entrusted to us, do
not let us think how little will pass muster,
but what is the best we can do, and then
resolve on doing this.

We must never forget that whoever truly
loves God will love his neighbour also, and
will prove this in daily life and intercourse.

I want you, my dear girl friends, to be
animated by this spirit in the home, whether
you are a daughter or one who, in serving,
serves also the Lord Christ. In the work-room
too, where so much of the character and
success of the employer depends on the
thoroughness and conscientiousness of the
workers.

Do not give the mother, the mistress, or
the outside employer cause to complain that
you put no heart into your work, or that, if
you can do it without immediate loss to
yourself, you will bestow less pains upon the
portion which is below the surface and not
likely to be so carefully examined as the rest.
To act in such a manner is to render the merest
eye-service. It is giving straw from which
nearly all the golden grain has been taken away.
It is fair-seeming, but unreal and untrue.

Little things sometimes illustrate important
lessons. Some time ago, two girls undertook
to dress a couple of dolls which were exactly
alike and intended as presents for twin sisters,
seven years old. Both were equally anxious
to give pleasure to the little people, but they
set about it in different ways. Each had the
same amount to spend on clothes, which was
not to be exceeded, but the details were left
to themselves.

The one chose her materials less for show
than for real fitness, and said to her friend,
who was lost in choice amongst remnants of
rich silks, “My doll is going to be just a little
girl, not a fine lady.”

“My fine lady will be the more attractive,”
said the other. “Both the children will
want it, and that will be the worst of it all.”

The other did not answer, but set diligently
to work, and gave time, pains, and patience
in no stinted measure. She made complete
sets of beautifully finished little garments,
both for day and night wear. Every string
and button was in the right place, and every
article could be taken off and put on as easily
as a real child’s. All would bear washing
and be none the worse for it.

The second girl bought rich silk for a frock,
dainty boots, and tiny silk stockings, and
succeeded in making a little picture hat,
evening cloak and dress in suitable style.
Altogether the lady doll made a distinguished
appearance; but below the shining dress there
were the poorest shams for garments, which,
once taken off, would not be worth replacing.

Naturally, both children at first turned
longing eyes on the gaily-attired doll, and
seemed anxious to possess it. But the
unselfish nature of one triumphed, and whilst
her sister grasped the showy toy, she whispered,
“I’ll have the other, please!” and lifted her
rosebud mouth to kiss the giver.

We know the endless joy a child finds in
playing “little mother.” She never tires of
dressing and undressing her doll, of setting up
a washing day for its garments, or smoothing
them with a tiny iron—under supervision.

The little twin maidens soon decided that
the doll, whose clothes could be treated exactly
like their own, was a treasure indeed, and the
curly heads bent over it, shared in maternal
cares, and found delightful occupation therein
for many a day.

The fine garments were, after all, but as
straw in comparison with corn. They were
just to be looked at and admired, then put
aside. They gave the “little mother” no
change. She could do nothing for a fine lady.

To the girl who had given of her best, the
sight of the children’s pleasure was reward
enough. As to the other, she said, “I meant
well, you did well; but I have learned a
lesson. Even a child soon finds out the
difference between what is thorough and what
has only a fair outside. I saw my gaily-dressed
toy lying neglected, whilst one ‘little
mother’ was hushing her sham baby to sleep
and the other child was folding away its day
clothes. They saw my eyes turning towards
my neglected handiwork, and, fearing I should
be hurt, one said, ‘She’s very nice to take
out for a walk; but she’s a fine lady, you
know, not a baby to nurse, and her things
won’t take off, so we can’t put her to bed.’
I said to myself, ‘No more shams even in doll
dressing. My work shall be real all through.’”

So the fine lady was not without use after
all. As to the other doll, it did more than
give pleasure. It was a mute lesson which
seemed to be always saying, “If a thing is
worth doing at all, it is worth doing well.”
It was an example of neatness, orderliness,
industry and ungrudging labour to the small
people, who were taught by those about them
to take care of what had cost so much
painstaking to produce.

I think I hear one of you ask, “Has not
straw its value also? Could it be done without?
Is it not necessary for the production
of the grain itself?”

Certainly it is a most valuable thing and
fills a most important place. It could be
ill spared from Nature’s storehouse. Its
uses are manifold, and would take long to
enumerate. You will remember that, at the
very beginning of our talk this evening, we
showed the straw in use, along with the
grain it held, both as an offering and a
decoration in the house of God. It was only
when it was proposed to put straw in place
of “the full corn in the ear,” that it was
objected to as an empty sham.

There is a great deal of straw mixed with
our social intercourse that might well be
thrown aside, and there are other cases in
which we should be sorry to part with it.
The visits which are paid merely because we
owe them, without the slightest wish to see
the individual and only to get rid of a feeling
of debt, are straw of one kind.

We have all heard the remark, “I got
through such a number of calls to-day. It
was so fine that nearly everybody was out, as
I thought they would be.”

The calls made in the expectation and hope
of finding our acquaintances out, are surely a
kind of social straw that we could well
dispense with. The invitation given, not
because a guest is really wanted, but because
it “would not do to leave her out,” is straw
of the same kind.

But there are many kind words said and
little thoughtful actions performed which are
only straw, in a sense; but we should miss
them sadly if they were omitted.

Supposing that one of you received two
gifts of equal intrinsic value at the same time.
A curt line or a telegram announced the one,
a lovingly-worded letter, or kind expressions
uttered in a tone and with a look of good will
accompanied the other. In neither case would
the value of the gift be affected; but—oh,
what a difference there would be in the feelings
of the receiver!

The prettily-worded letter or message would
linger in the memory and the pleasant smile
would be recalled whenever the gift was in
sight. They were but the straw that enfolded
it, but it was precious straw which had its
right place and value.

Much that I have said to-night, dear girls,
is intended to suggest thought—not to exhaust
the subject, for that would be difficult. But
I trust it will help us all to discriminate
between the false and the true, the thorough
and the fair-seeming, and strengthen our determination
to give of our best to God above all,
and, for His sake, to our neighbour also.

(To be continued.)

{392}

THE GUITARIST.

{393}

SOME NEW GUITAR MUSIC.

Now that the guitar has again become a
favourite and fashionable instrument, many
girls are searching out and bringing to light
guitars which their mothers, aye, and even
their grandmothers, played on in days gone
by, and they endeavour once more to awake
the long silent strings (if any survive) with
more or less musical and unmusical results.
Presuming that our readers have learnt the
rudiments from their master or mistress, or
even if they have found them out themselves
from such clear tutors as De Marescot’s (Metzler),
or Madame Sidney Pratten’s (Boosey),
they will find themselves soon able to undertake
the accompaniments in a collection of
twelve songs arranged for the guitar with
much taste and discrimination in album form
(1s. 6d.), by Lily Montagu (J. Williams).
These include Schubert’s “Who is Sylvia,”
Godard’s “Song of Florian;” songs by
Cowen, Cellier and A. Horrocks, who sets
Charles Kingsley’s wistful lines:—

The poor damsel was lost in the heath one
day, and, after bitter lamentation, she was
found a terrible wreck long after by her faithful
mistress, to whom

Most of us have gone through the triste era
of our girl-life, when we were obliged to
confess to ourselves that we had “grown too
big for dolls.”

Vol. I. of Alfred Scott Gatty’s well-known
plantation songs (Boosey) are now published
for guitar, and they “go” capitally.

There are some duets for two guitars by
Madame Pratten, and their effect is quite
charming; we think too that Messrs. Schott
still have the old but delightful Opus 87, by
Joseph Küffner, namely, twelve (short) duos
for two guitars for the use of beginners.

To those who wish to add the many Spanish
graces there are to their guitar playing, we
thoroughly recommend a really clever little
3s. book, particularly dealing with this difficult
subject for description. It is entitled “Brilliant
Effects on the Guitar,” by Edith Feilden
(J. Blockley). Most teaching photographs
show the hands in different positions on the
guitar, and its dainty exterior is so gaily and
well coloured by a representation of the
Spanish flag, that it is attractive for a gift
book. It is to be obtained of Miss Feilden,
Feniscowles House, Scarborough.

Mary Augusta Salmond.

A VICE-REGAL DINNER-PARTY.

By A MAJOR’S DAUGHTER.

It was not because I am a major’s daughter
that an invitation came to me one bright
autumn morning, but because I was the
curate’s wife. We were seated at breakfast
when the “command” to meet their Excellencies
was handed up. Just like the
proverbial curate’s family we were laying in a
foundation of stirabout, only our porridge was
swimming in thick yellow cream, and was
daintily served. On the table, besides, was the
purest heather honey, a few golden peaches,
and hot rolls of crispy bread.

“Thank goodness! a clergyman is always
in full dress!” quoth the dear curate, as he
pulled down his silk M.B. waistcoat. “But
you, my dear Eileen, had better meditate on
chiffons.”

And meditate I did, until I was fairly
puzzled. There was the white silk, and the
pink one, the yellow brocade, with its beautiful
train, and the simple muslin. I was very
young at the time, and dearly loved finery.

The real vital question of suitability turned
on what the invitation meant. Were Lord
and Lady L—— coming as royalty, or simply
as themselves? The duchess alone could
interpret her card, and so to the duchess I went.

“Did you not notice that R.S.V.P. was
omitted? Put on feathers and veils, and
your best bib and tuckers,” said the dear old
hostess. “’Tis as King and Queen their
Excellencies come.”

So, of course, the yellow brocade it had to
be, with its low neck, and short topaz-trimmed
sleeves.

Now, though the curate’s wife was fairly
well-to-do in the world, the curate would keep
no carriage. It was quite out of the question
to drive in a pony-trap to the Castle, so the
duchess “loaned” one of her own state
chariots! She did more, a few hours before
dinner-time a square box was handed in at
the Clergy House, containing a mass of copper-coloured
William Allen Richardsons, arranged
in the newest mode by the duchess’s head-gardener.

Most of the house-party were assembled in
the huge drawing-room when Mr. Giles,
accompanied by his attendant satellites, threw
open the door and announced—

“The Reverend and Mrs. Smith.”

It was blazing, too, with electric light, and
sweet with perfume as I walked forward, to
be encouragingly greeted by my dear old friend
and patron.

“Their Excellencies are not down yet,” she
said kindly; “but you are just in time——”

With this, the door was suddenly flung
open again, and everyone stood up, whilst
something like a cannon-ball plunged into the
room! It was the Lord-Lieutenant! I
found out, during the course of the evening,
that this was his way of hurrying in, in
order that the company might re-take their
seats as soon as possible. A few more
seconds, then a vision of loveliness in white
satin and crystal, and a whole stomacher of
magnificent pearls, walked in. It was sweet
Lady L——. There were no introductions,
and every usual order of procession into the
dining-room was reversed. For the duchess
went in first, leaning on the Lord-Lieutenant’s
arm, immediately followed by the Duke, leading
her Excellency. The rest of the company—thirteen
couples—followed in stately order,
the curate’s wife being last with some insignificant
honourable.

But she had her revenge! Her husband
was the first to speak, as he was called upon
by a rap to say grace, and she found herself on
Lord L——’s right hand. In order to show
why she was there, I must explain that the
royal chairs were placed in the centre of the
long table, not at each end, and that their
Excellencies and our hosts occupied the middle
of the room. In a few minutes I had time to
notice that their own footmen stood behind
the regal party, but that the rest of us were
served by the duke’s servants.

What a sight was that whole party! Every
earl wore his star, and every countess her
coronet. Jewels galore glittered everywhere.
All the same, the most striking-looking man
there was the curate, in his plain black dress,
with his beautiful face just as usual—calm and
radiant and spirituelle.

I do not think that dinner was quite a
success, though a chef had been engaged to
cook it and two others at a fee of £100. The
game was burned, and the ice-puddings were in
lumps. There were long pauses between the
rêlêves, and an ominous wait before all the
twelve courses were handed round. I was so
much taken up with the scene that I frequently
laid down my knife and fork, even before I
had tasted the morsels set before me, and
found everything whisked away in a second.

Nearly two hours that dinner occupied.
Then, from behind a palm, our hostess nodded
to the other end of the table, and his Excellency
stood up. For this moment I had
waited in fear and trembling. I knew we had
to make the tour of that long table, then back
out of the room, for royalty must never see
behind the scenes.

I had practised a sweeping curtsey before
the pier-glass at home. I had gracefully
backed from before it over and over again,
but when my turn came I grew the colour of
my copper roses, and nearly tumbled over my
train.

Nobody seemed to notice, however, not
even James Giles, the major-domo, so I was
fairly cool by the time the duchess took me
by the arm to introduce me to her Excellency.

“It is as good as a presentation at Court,
my dear,” she whispered, “and will give you
the entrée.”

I had often rehearsed this scene, and in
imagination had seen Lady L—— standing up
stately, and receiving the curate’s wife very
frigidly. Behold the contrary.

Seated on a stool before the blazing fire,
with all her lovely dress crumpled up under
her, Lady L—— was “roasting her bones,” as
she said. She jumped up like a girl when the
duchess led me towards her; and I really
think she admired the yellow brocade.

“I hope I shall soon see you at Court,” she
said pleasantly, as I kissed her hand. “And
your husband too. The brave stand made by
the Church of —— in all her difficulties makes
us value every one of her clergy and their wives,
even if they are bits of girls like yourself.”

Then she laughed, and I laughed, and we
found out we had each a beautiful home-ruler
at home about the same age, who ruled us
with a rod of iron. So we had a pleasant chat
until I forgot I was the curate’s wife and she
her Excellency.

Suddenly the cannon-ball shot in again,
in a great hurry, and we rose to our feet. A
few presentations had been made to him in the
dining-room, and soon everyone was chatting
like ordinary folk over coffee cups and cream.
About eleven o’clock cards were got out, and
the curate and “his reverence’s honoured
lady” left. I nearly backed into Mr. Giles
as I did so, and he very nearly laughed, but
not quite. I never saw Giles laugh.

As we were driving home under the big
elms and pines, we kept silence awhile. The
first remark came, of course, from me.

“I’m very hungry,” in a plaintive voice.

“And I’m starving,” was the response, as
the curate slipped his arm round his little
wife’s yellow brocade waist.

“American crackers and apples?” I suggested.

“And a big fire,” said his reverence, drawing
my furs closer round me. “You are frozen.”

So, over a blazing fire in our bedroom, we
ate crackers and apples to fill the vacuum left by
curiosity even after a vice-regal dinner-party.

{394}

ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.

By JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of “Sisters Three,” etc.

CHAPTER XXIV.

t was one o’clock
in the morning
when a carriage
drove up to the
door of the Larches,
and Mrs.
Asplin alighted,
all pale, tear-stained,
and
tremulous. She
had been nodding
over the fire
in her bedroom
when the young
people had returned
with the
news of the
tragic ending
to the
night’s festivity,
and
no persuasion
or argument
could induce
her to wait
until the next
day before flying
to Peggy’s side.

“No, no!”
she cried. “You
must not hinder
me. If I can’t
drive, I will
walk! I would
go to the child to-night if I had to crawl
on my hands and knees! I promised
her mother to look after her. How could
I stay at home and think of her lying
there? Oh, children, children, pray for
Peggy! Pray that she may be spared,
and that her poor parents may be spared
this awful—awful news!”

Then she kissed her own girls, clasped
them to her in a passionate embrace,
and drove off to the Larches in the
carriage which had brought the young
people home.

Lady Darcy came out to meet her,
and gripped her hand in eager welcome.

“You have come! I knew you would.
I am so thankful to see you. The doctor
has come, and will stay all night. He
has sent for a nurse——”

“And—my Peggy?”

Lady Darcy’s lips quivered.

“Very, very ill—much worse than
Rosalind! Her poor little arms! I
was so wicked, I thought it was her
fault, and I had no pity, and now it
seems that she has saved my darling’s
life. They can’t tell us about it yet,
but it was she who wrapped the curtain
round Rosalind, and burned herself in
pressing out the flames. Rosalind kept
crying ‘Peggy! Peggy!’ and we
thought she meant that it was Peggy’s
fault. We had heard so much of her
mischievous tricks. My husband found
her lying on the floor. She was unconscious;
but she came round when they
were dressing her arms. I think she
will know you——”

“Take me to her, please!” Mrs.
Asplin said quickly. She had to wait
several moments before she could control
her voice sufficiently to add, “And
Rosalind, how is she?”

“There is no danger. Her neck is
scarred, and her hair singed and
burned. She is suffering from the
shock, but the doctor says it is not
serious. Peggy——”

She paused, and the other walked on
resolutely, not daring to ask for the
termination of that sentence. She crept
into the little room, bent over the bed,
and looked down on Peggy’s face
through a mist of tears. It was drawn
and haggard with pain, and the eyes
met hers without a ray of light in their
hollow depths. That she recognised
was evident, but the pain which she
was suffering was too intense to leave
room for any other feeling. She lay
motionless, with her bandaged arms
stretched before her, and her face looked
so small and white against the pillow
that Mrs. Asplin trembled to think how
little strength was there to fight against
the terrible shock and strain. Only once
in all that long night did Peggy show
any consciousness of her surroundings,
but then her eyes lit up with a gleam
of remembrance, her lips moved, and
Mrs. Asplin bent down to catch the
faintly-whispered words—

“The twenty-sixth—next Monday!
Don’t tell Arthur!”

“‘The twenty-sixth’! What is that,
darling? Ah, I remember—Arthur’s
examination! You mean if he knew
you were ill, it would upset him for his
work?”

An infinitesimal movement of the
head answered “Yes,” and she gave
the promise in trembling tones—

“No, my precious, we won’t tell him.
He could not help, and it would only
distress you to feel that he was upset.
Don’t trouble about it, darling. It will
be all right.”

Then Peggy shut her eyes and wandered
away into a strange world, in
which accustomed things disappeared,
and time was not, and nothing remained
but pain, and weariness, and mystery.
Those of us who have come near to death
have visited this world too, and know the
blackness of it, and the weary waking.

Peggy lay in her little white bed and
heard voices speaking in her ear, and
saw strange shapes flit to and fro.
Quite suddenly as it appeared, a face
would be bending over her own, and as
she watched it with languid curiosity
wondering what manner of thing it
could be, it would melt away and vanish
in the distance. At other times again
it would grow larger and larger, until
it assumed gigantic proportions, and
she cried out in fear of the huge, saucer-like
eyes. There was a weary puzzle
in her brain, an effort to understand,
but everything seemed mixed up and
incomprehensible. She would look
round the room and see the sunshine
peeping in through, the chinks of the
blinds, and when she closed her eyes
for a moment—just a single, fleeting
moment—lo! the gas was lit, and someone
was nodding in a chair by her side.
And it was by no means always the
same room. She was tired, and wanted
badly to rest, yet she was always rushing
about here, there, and everywhere,
striving vainly to dress herself in clothes
which fell off as soon as they were
fastened, hurrying to catch a train to
reach a certain destination; but in each
instance the end was the same—she
was falling, falling, falling—always
falling—from the crag of an Alpine
precipice, from the pinnacle of a tower,
from the top of a flight of stairs. The
slip and the terror pursued her wherever
she went; she would shriek aloud, and
feel soft hands pressed on her cheeks,
soft voices murmuring in her ear.

One vision stood out plainly from
those nightmare dreams—the vision of
a face which suddenly appeared in the
midst of the big grey cloud which
enveloped her on every side—a beautiful
face which was strangely like, and yet
unlike, something she had seen long,
long ago in a world which she had well
nigh forgotten. It was pale and thin,
and the golden hair fell in a short curly
crop on the blue garment which was
swathed over the shoulders. It was
like one of the heads of celestial choirboys
which she had seen on Christmas
cards and in books of engravings, yet
something about the eyes and mouth
seemed familiar. She stared at it
curiously, and then suddenly a strange,
weak little voice faltered out a well-known
name.

“Rosalind!” it cried, and a quick
exclamation of joy sounded from the
side of the bed. Who had spoken?
The first voice had been strangely like
her own, but at an immeasurable
distance. She shut her eyes to think
about it, and the fair-haired vision
disappeared and was seen no more.

There was a big, bearded man also
who came in from time to time, and
Peggy grew to dread his appearance,
for with it came terrible stabbing pain,
as if her whole body were on the rack.
He was one of the Spanish Inquisitors,
of whom she had read, and she was an
English prisoner whom he was torturing!
Well, he might do his worst! She
would die before she would turn traitor
and betray her flag and country. The
Savilles were a fighting race, and would
a thousand times rather face death than
dishonour.

One day when she felt rather stronger
than usual, she told him so to his face,
and he laughed—she was quite sure he{395}
laughed, the hard-hearted wretch! And
someone else said, “Poor little love!”
which was surely an extraordinary
expression for a Spanish Inquisitor.
That was one of the annoying things
in this new life—people were so exceedingly
stupid in their conversation!

Now and again she herself had something
which she was especially anxious
to say, and when she set it forth with
infinite difficulty and pains, the only
answer which she received was a soothing
“Yes, dear, yes!” “No, dear, no!”
or a still more maddening “Yes, darling,
I quite understand!”—which she
knew perfectly well to be an untruth.
Really these good people seemed to
think that she was demented, and did
not know what she was saying. As a
matter of fact it was exactly the other
way about; but she was too tired to
argue. And then one day came a sleep
when she neither dreamt, nor slipped,
nor fell, but opened her eyes refreshed
and cheerful, and beheld Mrs. Asplin
sitting by a table drinking tea and eating
what appeared to be a particularly
tempting slice of cake.

“I want some cake!” she said
clearly, and Mrs. Asplin jumped as if
a cannon had been fired off at her ear,
and rushed breathlessly to the bedside,
stuttering and stammering in amazement—

“Wh—wh—wh—what?”

“Cake!” repeated Peggy shrilly.
“I want some! And tea! I want my
tea!”

Surely it was a very natural request!
What else could you expect from a girl
who had been asleep and wakened up
feeling hungry? What on earth was
there in those commonplace words to
make a grown-up woman cry like a
baby, and why need everyone in the
house rush in and stare at her as if she
were a figure in a waxwork? Lord Darcy,
Lady Darcy, Rosalind, the old French
maid—they were all there—and, as sure
as her name was Peggy Saville, they were
all four, handkerchief in hand, mopping
their eyes like so many marionettes!

Nobody gave her the cake for which
she had asked. Peggy considered it
exceedingly rude and ill-bred; but while
she was thinking of it she grew tired
again, and rolling round into a soft
little bundle among the blankets, fell
afresh into sweet refreshing slumbers.

(To be continued.)

GOOD CHEER FOR WOMEN WORKERS.

A Short Sketch of “Kent House,” the Y. W. C. A. Home for Students and Others
at 91, Great Portland Street, London.

By the Hon. SUPERINTENDENT.

Their number is so great now that the most
old-fashioned and conservative of us are bound
to recognise women workers as a separate
factor in our national life.

There has been a gradual, though very
evident, upheaval in our social system during
the last few years; new occupations are
opening to women on every side, and girls
flock to London and other large centres to fit
themselves for these. They are the women
of the future, keen, eager for the fray, with
fresh interests, hopes and ambitions—a motley
crowd gathered from every section of middle-class
society.

It is both a happiness and an education to
come into close personal touch with fresh
young lives whose work will so greatly affect
the well-being of England in the near future.
For in each life there lie elements of the
eternal and the divine, capacities for good or
evil. It is a time for building. Character,
tastes, habits, faith, may either be unformed
or in a transition state. When the floods
rise and storm winds blow, strong foundations
laid at the outset of a girl’s independent
career will help her to resist and stand firm.

We are a large community of women at
Kent House, most of us young and untried,
though among the older ones we are glad to
number a few lecturers, teachers, and writers,
besides nurses from one or other of the great
nursing associations of London. Friends in
need these last, especially in the winter-time,
when chills and other small ailments attack our
ranks like foes to be fought and conquered.

“Such a lot of women living together, and
so little bickering and snarling!” a visitor
exclaimed the other day. But I think most
of us are too busy to be cantankerous, and
our common womanhood, lived out in homelike
surroundings, links us too closely together
for petty word-wars.

Happy, well-filled student life forms the
principal element of the household, though I
was amused one day to find that even students
may be unlearned in the etymology of words.
One of our candidates for admission emulated
the immortal M. Jourdain, who talked prose
without knowing it, by remarking doubtfully,
“I am not a student. I only go to Bedford
College for classes.”

Most of the girls sleep in cubicles separated
by thin wood partitions, the rooms being
reserved for the older ladies, except two or
three double rooms apportioned to girls who
chum together.

Conversation is carried on freely “over the
cubicle wall,” and listeners may sometimes
overhear scraps illustrating the good comradeship
and bonhomie of student life.

“Oh, Molly,” cries one girl to her mate
next door, “when you leave the Slade and
set up a studio, and Harold and I are earning
enough to marry on, won’t we have many
a jaw about jolly old Kent House left
behind!”

Kent House prices are framed to meet
slender resources. For twelve shillings weekly
a girl can provide herself with a snug little
cubicle and good breakfast and supper. The
dining-hall menu is of a varied order, always
tea, coffee, and cocoa without stint, a roast
joint, and two or three made dishes, fish or
soup, bread and butter, and jam or marmalade.

Dinner and afternoon tea are not included
in the fixed board tariff, but paid for at table,
restaurant fashion—uniform charge 9d. and
4d., respectively.

Anyone who orders “five o’clock tea” is
served with a pot freshly made for each
person, bread and butter, muffins, or tea-cake.
We are glad to welcome non-residents to both
these meals.

“But how can you make the concern pay
at such prices?” asks some cynical political
economist.

I answer, illogically of course, as I am a
woman, “We do make it pay.”

Conversation at meals is by no means
confined to the English tongue, for visitors
of all nationalities throw themselves on the
hospitality of Kent House. English “as she
is spoke” by French and Germans makes
many a quaint piece of word-painting.

A Dutch lady, describing her struggles with
the letter “h,” raised a merry laugh at one
of the supper-tables.

“I go to the Wood Saint John,” she
remarked, “and I say to the gend’arme,
‘Which bus, if you please, sare, take I?’
He say to me quite short ‘Hatless’; but I
find it not. Then I ask one other. He say
to me, ‘You would mean Atlas—no?’ But
I say, ‘No, I do not think—it is Hatless.’
He smile and he tell me, ‘The English peoples
they goes without umbrellas, but without hats—oh,
no, nevare!’”

It has been a work of great difficulty to
establish and keep going a Home in the very
centre of London on liberal housekeeping lines
which yet should be self-supporting. Perhaps
it has been even more difficult to keep in close
personal relationship with girls and women
who need society, friends, sympathy, amusement,
yet whose freedom must in no sense be
interfered with.

Without a sursum corda I believe both
would be impossible. With it we have
surmounted many difficulties and lived through
many dark days. And as morning after morning
we gather together as a household to give
the first freshness of our thoughts to God, there
may be many denominations amongst us, but
there is one Christ, and there is a sacred unity
underlying every variety of dogma or ritual—the
unity of His spirit in His bond of peace.

{396}

OLD ENGLISH COTTAGE HOMES;
OR,
VILLAGE ARCHITECTURE OF BYGONE TIMES.

PART VI.

We now have to consider cottages erected of
different materials and constructed in a totally
different manner to those which we have
hitherto described, and this variety in methods
of building naturally leads to a distinct treatment
of details and decoration.

AT HUNDRED ELMS, NEAR HARROW.

We find all along the Kentish sea-coast
houses and cottages, the chief materials entering
into the construction of which are flint,
sometimes cut so as to form the surface of
their walls, and sometimes left irregular in
shape, and the wall surfaces chiefly formed
by the mortar in which the stones are embedded.
This is called flint rubble. Where the
flint is cut to a surface the angles, doorways,
and window openings are constructed of stone
or brick, and these are the portions of the
building which receive ornamentation and give
the character to the design, but where the
flint is uncut and used as rubble, not unfrequently
the whole surface is covered with a
coating of plaster which is adorned in various
ways, sometimes by simply drawing over it
a toothed implement like a saw, sometimes
by stamping or “pargeting,” and occasionally
by mixing the plaster with coloured
materials of several shades and arranging
them in patterns.

This last method is somewhat akin to what
the Italians call “sgraffito.” I do not think
that genuine sgraffito was ever executed in
England, but that in some parts of this country
they obtained a very similar effect by other
means. In genuine sgraffito a layer of dark
coloured plaster is placed over the wall, and
when that is dry a layer of white or lighter
coloured plaster is spread over it while wet:
this second coating is scraped away in places
so as to form a pattern or design over the
darker material.

The ornamentation of which we give a
sketch from Calais-Court, near Dover, appears
to have been done by coloured plasters placed
side by side, not one over the other. We are
not, however, quite sure about this, as the
lower portions of the work have either been
destroyed or never executed, so that it is
difficult to examine it closely. The two
wheel patterns are very curious and are probably
inspired by the wheel windows of ancient
churches. One of them is not unlike the
east window of Barfreston church a few miles
away. This kind of imitation of wheel windows
is not uncommon in old decoration. The
church of Chastleton in Oxfordshire has a
floor of encaustic tiling entirely composed
of this ornamentation. It is difficult to
ascribe any exact date to this work at Calais-Court;
it is probably not earlier than the
sixteenth century. The house or cottage has
been so much pulled about and altered, at
later periods, that it is impossible to say
whether it forms a portion of a larger structure
or was always of its present humble proportions.

The first example we give is from a farm
called “Hundred Elms,” between Harrow and
Sudbury. It is now used as a stable with a
loft over it. I think it was originally a dwelling-house,
though as the whole of the interior
has been dismantled and altered, its purpose
cannot be distinctly traced; its great peculiarity
is that everything is constructed of
brick, the window-mullions and tracery being
very neatly cut out of that material and put
together with no little skill. It is thought
that the Archbishops of Canterbury, in early
times, had a residence at Hundred Elms (in
the fourteenth century), and that afterwards
they removed to Headstone, where there
still exists a moated grange, now a farm-house.

{397}

AT CALAIS-COURT, KENT.

The Rev. W. Done Bushell in the “Harrow
Octocentenary Tracts” has entered into all the
arguments connected with the question, and
they are very interesting, but too long to quote
here, nor would they help us in ascertaining
the history or purpose of this interesting little
building, as the Archbishops must have left
Hundred Elms farm some two centuries before
it was built, as it is evidently a sixteenth
century work.

Brickwork in England, it should be observed,
is rarely found in houses before the commencement
of the sixteenth century. Although
brick-making was never quite abandoned, yet
it was very little used during the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The only
important brick church erected during this
period is Holy Trinity at Hull, which is of fine
red brick. The thirteenth century walls of
Yarmouth show dressings of white brick, used
like stone, and brick vaulting constructed
exactly after the manner of stone is to be seen
in the ground floor of the Bishop’s Palace and
the Chapter House of the Blackfriars monastery
at Norwich. At the commencement of the
sixteenth century brick was probably regarded
as a luxury and was more expensive than
stone. This explains the fact that the
palaces and great mansions of the nobles
are erected of this material in all districts
where it could be procured. In the second
quarter of the century, it became the practice
to build all the better class of houses of
brick in the eastern and home counties of
England, though not so in the north or west
where fine building stone was much more
easily procurable. It is, however, very remarkable
that even in the eastern counties, where
beautiful brick was to hand, we scarcely ever
find this material used for churches. There
was evidently an idea prevalent in the minds
of our forefathers that churches should be
built of stone, and houses of brick, and this
prejudice, to a great extent, prevails to the
present day, and is very curious because it
does not pertain in any other country in
Europe. I think nearly all girls and women
dislike brick churches, yet why they should do
so it is difficult to understand. We should
like some of our clever girls to tell us.

(To be continued.)

HIS GREAT REWARD.

CHAPTER III.

It was Tuesday afternoon in the week following
Easter week, and Mrs. Heritage and her
daughter were together in the tiny drawing-room
of their house in York Road, when a
knock at the street door made them turn and
look at each other in surprise.

“Whoever can it be, mumsie darling?”
exclaimed Marielle, pausing in her occupation
of arranging bunches of yellow daffodils
in brown jars on the mantelpiece. Fresh and
fair and sweet as the Lent lilies, some of
which she had pinned in the bosom of her
dress, looked the girl herself, as she stood
there in her simple black gown, which only
served to set off her delicate complexion to
greater advantage.

“I’m sure I don’t know, dearie. It is not
very likely to be a visitor for us any way,
since very few of our old friends seem to care
to trouble themselves about calling nowadays.
It was different when your father was alive.”
And Mrs. Heritage’s lips quivered a little as
the recollection of social triumphs, long gone
by, flashed through her mind.

How true it is that “a sorrow’s crown of
sorrow is remembering happier things!”

Marielle had only time to cast a loving
glance at her mother in answer, for the opening
of the door and a slight rustle outside
warned her that a visitor was approaching.

“Mrs. Duncan!” was announced by the
little maid who, with faithful old Mysie the
cook, constituted the whole of the domestic
establishment at No. 27.

{398}

With stately courtesy Marielle’s mother
rose to receive the doctor’s wife, her manner
insensibly thawing however, under the influence
of her visitor’s winning smile.

“I am so glad to find you at home,” began
Mrs. Duncan as soon as she was seated.
Then, noticing that Marielle dropped the rest
of the flowers she was holding on to a newspaper
which she had spread upon a chair
near, “Please do not let me interrupt you,
Miss Heritage. Will you not go on arranging
your flowers?”

“I shall do so with pleasure if you do not
mind,” replied Marielle brightly, “only I fear
I shall have to turn my back upon you now
and again during the performance.”

“Oh, never mind that, it will be reward
enough to see the effects of your handiwork
when finished. I am so fond of daffodils.
They are my favourite flowers.”

“And mine also,” returned Marielle, pleased
at the mutual taste. Then—smiling and holding
a big bunch towards Mrs. Duncan—“Aren’t
these beauties too? I saw them as
I was coming back from Forman’s this
morning, and I could not resist the temptation
of bringing some home with me. They look
so bright they are quite cheering. I always
think yellow flowers are like sunlight in a
room.”

“They are indeed,” assented Mrs. Duncan,
lifting her gaze from the flowers in order to
contemplate the face bending over her.

“How pure and true it looks!” she mused.
Those large clear hazel eyes, with their black
lashes, and delicately-pencilled dark eyebrows,
the refined features, and rose-leaf skin,
crowned by the rebellious fair hair which, in
spite of all Marielle’s efforts, persisted in
standing out round her shapely head, like a
veritable golden halo—all these made up a
picture which, once seen, was not likely to pass
out of mind.

And the girl herself, with her tall, dainty
figure, was as good and true as her face
indicated.

Little wonder then that Mrs. Heritage
thanked God every day on her knees for the
precious gift of her daughter. Her flowers
all disposed of into the various vases, Marielle
slipped away to wash her hands, and to give
a few directions concerning afternoon tea.
Ann was to be sure to put the pretty new
cloth worked by Marielle’s busy fingers on
the table, and Mysie must not forget to send
up some of her delicious hot scones, and the
shortbread which she was famous for making.

Mysie, who nearly worshipped the young
girl she had known from a baby, promised to
do her best, and Marielle ran upstairs to remove
the flower-stains from her fingers,
humming as she went the air of a favourite
song.

In the meantime the elder ladies, left alone,
found themselves rapidly progressing towards
intimacy. They had many tastes in common
as they soon discovered, and each had known
a great sorrow in the loss of one very dear to
them. We know that in the one case, viz.,
that of Mrs. Heritage, it was the husband
who had been taken away, while in that of
Mrs. Duncan, it was the daughter.

It was not long before the conversation
turned upon Marielle’s singing, and her
mother’s face flushed with pleasure at the
warm tribute of praise bestowed upon the
girl by her new acquaintance.

Mrs. Duncan was proceeding to enlarge
upon the pleasure it had given them all to
hear her, when she was interrupted by the
girl herself, and shortly after, the tea made
its appearance.

The hot scones and shortbread were duly
discussed by the three ladies in a manner that
made old Mysie beam again when told of it
by Marielle.

After extracting a promise from Mrs.
Heritage and her daughter to the effect that
they would soon come and see her, Mrs.
Duncan took her departure. But all the way
home she seemed to be haunted by the fair
face, clear hazel eyes, and ringing laugh of
Marielle Heritage.

“I like Mrs. Duncan, mother, don’t
you?” asked the girl after their visitor had
gone.

“Very much, darling, as far as I can tell
at present,” replied Mrs. Heritage, fondly regarding
her daughter as she ensconced herself
upon a footstool at her feet, and prepared for
a cosy talk in the firelight. “She has known
trouble too, poor thing, she lost her only
daughter two years ago.”

“Oh, did she, mumsie? How sorry I am!
Perhaps that is what makes her look so sad
at times.” For Marielle had noticed the
wistful look that had crept over Mrs.
Duncan’s face when regarding herself.

“It may be that she envies me my daughter,”
rejoined Mrs. Heritage proudly. “Yet
I do not think she is sad, for she told me
that this Eastertide had been the happiest
she had ever known.”

“I wonder why?” speculated Marielle.

“Perhaps we may learn the reason some
day, darling. But here comes Ann with
the lamp, and you must leave me in peace as
I have several letters to write before post
time.”

“And I must try over that new work for
the Chester concert,” replied Marielle, and
very shortly both the ladies were absorbed in
their respective occupations.

Three months had come and gone, and the
acquaintance begun between the Duncans and
Heritages had rapidly ripened into a warm
friendship. Scarcely a week now passed
without, at any rate, the ladies of the two
families meeting at one house or the other,
and Mrs. Duncan had begun to feel that she
should sorely miss either Mrs. Heritage or
Marielle should anything occur to cause their
removal from Manningham. True, the remark
was frequently made to Marielle, “Oh, you
ought to be in London!” But the girl so
far had only smiled and answered very justly:

“Why should I go to London when I can
find plenty to do here. There I should be
only one among hundreds, while here I
already have a position and name in the
musical world.”

The force of her argument was undeniable,
and the Heritages remained in Manningham.

One hot afternoon in July a telegram came
to No. 27, York Road, from a pupil, to ask
Marielle if she could give a lesson at Forman’s
at five o’clock.

Marielle grumbled a little, not unnaturally,
as it would necessitate her breaking a promise
she had made to accompany her mother and
Mrs. Duncan in a walk to the High Park at
that hour. But the pupil was one whom it
would not do to offend, so she wired back
that she would give the lesson, and persuaded
her mother not to give up the walk on
that account, but to go notwithstanding her
own absence.

“You will get your walk just the same,
mother darling, won’t you? For I know Mrs.
Duncan would be greatly disappointed if you
did not go. It would seem as if you only
cared to go when I was with you, and that
would never do!”

Mrs. Heritage gave the required promise,
and duly set forth at the time appointed.

The lesson over, Marielle glanced at her
watch. It wanted five-and-twenty minutes
to six.

“I know what I will do,” she said to
herself as she closed the piano and drew on
her gloves. “I’ll take a Roxton Road tram,
and get out at the park gates. I am sure to
find mother and Mrs. Duncan in the Rose-walk,
they always gravitate in that direction”—smiling,
as she pictured their surprise at her
unexpected appearance. “I wonder I did not
think of it before. I shall be in time to walk
home with them in any case, if only I do not
have to wait long for my tram!”

Good fortune awaited her in this respect,
and the hands of the clock in the park tower
were pointing to six as she sped along towards
the Rose-walk. Presently she descried the
two ladies she sought sitting together on a
bench, but they were evidently far too much
occupied with one another to take any heed
of Marielle’s approach, if, indeed, they heard
her footsteps on the grass. No one else was
in sight, and the girl drew nearer until when
within a few yards, her mother looked up and
saw her.

“Why, Marielle darling, what a pleasure!”
Mrs. Heritage exclaimed, but her voice
sounded tremulous, and Marielle, coming
closer still, scrutinised the faces of the two
friends. The eyes of both were full of tears,
which, as the girl gazed, overflowed. Not a
little alarmed, she hurriedly asked what was
the matter.

“Come and sit here between us, dear, and
you shall know,” answered Mrs. Duncan for
them both, smiling and making room on the
bench beside her.

Puzzled, and it must be confessed, extremely
curious, Marielle did as she was
requested, and Mrs. Duncan began:

“I have just been telling your dear mother,
Marielle, what it has often before been my
wish to make known to her; but one naturally
feels a little shy about speaking of such
matters until sufficiently intimate with anyone
to warrant doing so. What I had to tell was
simply this, that under God, to you, dear
girl, I owe the greatest happiness of my life.
Your singing at St. Jude’s on the last Sunday
in Lent, of ‘There is a green hill,’ was the
means of opening my dear husband’s eyes to
his need of a Saviour, and he has been a
changed man ever since. Not that he was
ever anything but good, kind, and true, but
his belief was not a living faith, and his soul
might be said to have been almost dead
within him. Now all is different, and John
and I, who had been at one upon every other
point except religion, are now at one upon
that too. I repeat that I have to thank you,
dear girl, for the greatest happiness of
my life, under God,” and taking Marielle’s
hand in hers, Margaret Duncan pressed it
affectionately.

For a few moments not a word was spoken,
for Marielle could not control her voice sufficiently.
She was moved beyond expression,
and realised more fully than ever she had done
what a gift had been entrusted to her by God,
in that glorious voice and high musical talent.
Presently however she turned to Mrs. Duncan
with glistening eyes, and remarked simply:

“I shall always consider what you have
told me, as my greatest reward, since no
amount of money could ever be worth to me
what the knowledge of the good I was the
instrument, in God’s hands, of doing, will
ever be.”

(To be concluded.)

{399}

A DREAM OF FAIR SERVICE.

By C. A. MACIRONE.

CHAPTER III.

THE POOR ITALIAN PEASANT, ROSA GOVONA.

I was lost in thought, and dreaming of the
incidents I had been permitted to see, when
the vast hall and its dark recesses recurred to
my mind, and the radiant angels, the recorders
of noble actions, were again before me, lofty
figures of light holding back the cloudy
draperies, and bringing before me now an
Italian countryside, hilly, rocky, its distant
town, and campanile, the angelus sounding
in the air; up the mountains and rugged hillsides
a few peasants’ huts, and in woods and
valleys, brooks and waterfalls making a music
of their own, through which the angelus
seemed to breathe the peace and rest of
religion.

The evening sunshine threw a golden glow
over woods and mountain, valleys and chestnut
woods, and in one of those huts I saw
a woman—a working woman past the first
bloom of youth—alone, noted for her skill
in needlework, one of dignified, calm, and
modest demeanour. She was troubled at the
distress of a friend, a young orphan girl who
was forsaken and helpless, and, unfortunately,
too young to live in that country without
some responsible protector. She had come
to Rosa in her trouble. “Come to me,”
Rosa said. Her name was Rosa Govona.
“Here shalt thou abide with me. Thou
shalt sleep in my bed, thou shalt drink of
my cup, and thou shalt live by the labours of
thine own hands.”

I saw the young guest docile and industrious,
a success and a comfort. Her safety and
happiness became evident, and I saw inmate
after inmate, young, helpless, and orphaned,
gathered into Rosa’s home in the hills,
working and learning, adding one industry
after another amidst calumny and persecution.
Ignorance and Vice lost no time in attacking
them, and only their silence and patience,
loyalty to their Head, and blameless lives,
could, and did at last, quiet their enemies.

I saw, after a while, the authorities of the
town (Mondovi) offer Rosa, whose community
had grown too large for the little village
where they first lived, a large house in the
flowery plains of Carcassonne, but the foundress
of the home still could not receive all
who flocked to her. Lonely and poor girls,
exposed to so many temptations of want and
evil, pleaded for admission to the shelter and
order of her home, and a still larger house at
Brao rose, with its serene religion, its peaceful
order, its intelligent work, its ceaseless
industry.

Years went by, and lo! another scene arose
before me—Turin, the bright capital of
Piedmont, girt with its snow mountains,
Monte Viso and the lesser heights around it—Turin,
its stately palaces and white streets;
and into this city came a poor working peasant,
Rosa Govona, on whose wisdom and goodness
a large household now depended, her suite
two or three of the poor friendless orphan
girls whom she had saved and befriended.

“I saw the Fathers of the Oratory of St.
Philip moved for the love of God to give her
a few rooms, and the soldiers at the barracks,
roused to enthusiasm by the reports ringing
through the town of the good work she had
done, ransacked the place for straw mattresses
and tables.

“Blessing and praising God, the little army
of working women and girls march into
Turin, and in a short time large buildings
which belonged to a suppressed monastery
are given over to Rosa and her people. The
buildings are large, but they are soon filled with
forsaken orphan girls, and the King (Charles
Emanuel III.) considers and approves the
judicious rules laid down by Rosa, and orders
the factories of the establishment to be
organised and registered by the magistrates
who regulate commercial matters.

“I see this vast organisation under the special
patronage of the Sardinian Government.”

Two great factories under the Rosinas (so
called in honour of their foundress) have risen
into public usefulness, the one of cloth for the
army, the other of the best silks and ribands.

Thanks to this single-handed, poor working
woman, Rosa Govona, I see three hundred
women, without dowry, without any resource
save their own labour and their conscientious
discipline, earning an honest and comfortable
livelihood, and able to provide in youth for
the comfort and independence of old age.

I see houses depending on that at Turin
established at Novara, Fossano, Savigliano,
Saluzzo, Chieri, and St. Damian of Asti.

I see over every house which she founded,
engraved over the entrance, the words she
addressed to her first guest, “Tu mangerai
col lavoro delle tue mani”—“Thou shalt live
by the labour of thine own hands.”

I see twenty-one years spent in going over
the provinces of Piedmont, and founding
asylums for the unprotected and industrious
poor of her own sex, until, exhausted by her
labours, she died at Turin.

I see her remains deposited in the chapel
of the establishment, and there, on the simple
monument which covers them, may still be
read the following epitaph:—

“Here lies Rosa Govona of Mondovi.
From her youth she consecrated herself to
God. For His glory she founded in her
native place and in other towns, retreats,
opened for forsaken young girls, so that they
might serve God. She gave them excellent
regulations, which attach them to piety and
labour. During an administration of thirty
years she gave constant proofs of admirable
charity and of unshaken firmness. She entered
on eternal life on the 28th day of
February in the year 1776, the sixtieth year
of her age. Grateful daughters have raised
this monument to their mother and benefactress.”

I saw this noble and dignified life come to
a close amidst those she had saved and blessed.
“They say of her that she was ever doing, ever
thoughtful and silent. In aspect she was
grave, earnest, and resolute. I beheld her as
they describe her, a serious and beneficent
apparition. A plain cap, a white kerchief
across her bosom, and a brown robe constituted
the attire of the foundress of the
Rosinas. She imposed no tie upon her
people. They can leave their abode and
marry if they wish, but they rarely do so.

“I saw, in a later vision of the Rosinas,
they are still prosperous and happy. They are
admitted from thirteen to twenty. They
must be wholly destitute, healthy, active, and
both able and willing to work. The old and
infirm are supported by their younger companions.[2]
To preserve the spirit of the
modest and retired life which Rosa wished
her daughters to lead, no commercial matters
are transacted save at the establishment in
Turin, which governs the other houses.

“The labours of the Rosinas are varied and
complete. Whatever they manufacture they
do with their own hands from beginning to
end. They buy the cocoons in spring, and
perform every one of the delicate operations
which silk undergoes before it is finally woven
into gros de Naples, levantines, and ribands.
Their silks are of the best quality, but plain,
in order to avoid the expense and inconvenience
of changing their looms with every
caprice of fashion. They also fabricate linen,
but only a limited number of Rosinas can
undergo the fatigue of weaving. In order not
to interfere with the silk establishment at
Turin, the manufacture of woollen stuffs is
now carried on at Chieri. Government buys
all the cloth of the army from the Rosinas.
They even manufacture all the necessary
ornaments, and make up the uniforms, with
one cut out for them by tailors. Gold lace
and the rich vestments of priests are likewise
produced by these industrious women …
who are renowned for their skill in embroidery.

“There is a large magazine at Turin where
the produce of their labours is gathered and
sold by trustworthy persons, and is patronised
by Government and by the population, for
their goods are excellent in quality and fair in
price, and there is a general preference for the
work of these pure and innocent women. The
house in Turin alone spends eighty thousand
francs a year. It holds three hundred women,
and is governed by six mistresses and one
director, a woman, and an ecclesiastic administers
and directs it; and it is frequently visited
by the Queen, who grants it a special protection
and interest.”

And this was the work of one poor and
obscure workwoman, inspired by love of her
orphan and helpless sisters, and in her devotion
to her God.

(To be concluded.)

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