e accomplishments of walking and talking--and
then!--but as that hour of turmoil and commotion to which his mamma
looked forward with ecstacy was yet at some months distance, I contented
myself with saying of master Archy, with considerably less than the
usual falsehood, that which everybody does say of only children, that he
was the finest baby that ever was seen.

We met almost every day. Mrs. Cameron was never weary of driving about
our beautiful lanes in her little pony-carriage, and usually called upon
us in her way home, we being not merely her oldest, but almost her only
friends; for lively and social as was her temper, there was a little
touch of shyness about her, which induced her rather to shun than to
covet the company of strangers. And indeed the cheerfulness of temper,
and activity of mind, which made her so charming an acquisition to a
small circle, rendered her independent of general society. Busy as a
bee, sportive as a butterfly, she passed the greater part of her time
in the open air, and having caught from me that very contagious and
engrossing passion, a love of floriculture, had actually undertaken
the operation of restoring the old garden at the Court--a coppice of
brambles, thistles, and weeds of every description, mixed with flowering
shrubs, and overgrown fruit-trees--to something like its original order.
The farmer, to be sure, had abandoned the job in despair, contenting
himself with growing his cabbages and potatoes in a field hard by. But
she was certain that she and her maid Martha, and the boy Bill, who
looked after her pony, would weed the paths, and fill the flower-borders
in no time. We should see; I had need take good care of my reputation,
for she meant her garden to beat mine.

What progress Helen and her forces, a shatter-brain boy who did not know
a violet from a nettle, and a London-bred girl who had hardly seen
a rose-bush in her life, would have made in clearing this forest of
underwood, might easily be foretold. Accident, however, that frequent
favourer of bold projects, came to her aid in the shape of a more
efficient coadjutor.

Late one evening the fair Helen arrived at our cottage with a face of
unwonted gravity. Mrs. Davies (her landlady) had used her very ill.
She had taken the west wing in total ignorance of there being other
apartments to let at the Court, or she would have secured them. And now
a new lodger had arrived, had actually taken possession of two rooms
in