one they had so lately left.

'I wish Mr. Bob had a nice glass house like this,' said Olive
thoughtfully. 'Why doesn't he, Roly?'

'We'll ask him next time we see him. I expect he is too poor.'

'And, Roly, do you think Jack Frost is a thief who tries to steal
James's flowers?'

'I don't know.'

A little later, when nurse was taking them into the house, Olive
inquired again, rather anxiously, 'Nurse, I hope Jack Frost won't come
to us when we're in bed; James seemed to think we should feel him.'

'No, no, Miss Olive; I'll tuck you up too warm for that. There will be
no Jack Frost in our nursery, I can tell you. I keep too big a fire.'

But the little girl was anxious and ill at ease, till at last she
unburdened her mind to Miss Sibyl, when she went to wish her
'good-night' in the drawing-room.

'Why, Olive dear, Jack Frost isn't a man; that is only a joke. When it
is very cold the air freezes, and the pretty dew-drops on the grass and
flowers all turn to ice. Have you never seen a frost?'

'No, never.'

'Frosts kill all the flowers--that is why James does not like it coming;
but it is the flowers out of doors that feel it most.'

'But,' said Roland, edging up to his aunt, 'there are no flowers to
kill; there are only bare, dried-up trees and dark bushes. Mr. Bob told
us they had all gone to sleep under the ground.'

'So they have, but it is frost and cold that has killed them off.'

'I don't like England,' said little Olive mournfully; and when she was
comfortably tucked up in bed that night, she said sleepily, 'If I had a
nice garden of flowers, I wouldn't leave them all out in the cold and
dark to die, and I'll never live in England when I grow up, for winter
is a dreadful thing!'

The children soon found out what frost and cold meant; but the novelty
of the small icicles outside their windows, and the beauty of the hoar
frost glittering on the trees and bushes in the sunshine, more than
compensated for the uncomfortable experience of cold hands and feet.

[Illustration]

They soon paid a visit to old Bob again, and this time he took them into
the old-fashioned churchyard, which lay just outside the lodge gates on
the other side of the road.

'This is my other garden,' he said gravely, 'for I gets so much from the
rector every year for keeping the ground tidy.'

Roland and Olive looked round them with much interest.

Old Bob took them to a quiet corner soon, and pointed out five grassy
mounds