from his mother, and he set them and watered them, and
said he 'reckoned flowers was a nice pastime for any one that was
afflicted,' but I felt sure he'd got something more to say, and at last
it came out. He is vexed that he used to play truant so at school and
never learned anything. He can't read a newspaper, and he can't write or
reckon, and he said he was 'shamed' to go to school and learn among
little boys, and he knew I was a good scholar, and he'd come to ask if I
would teach him now and then in the evening, and he would work in the
garden for me in return. I told him I'd teach him without that, but he
said he 'liked things square and fair,' and Mr. Wood said I was to let
him; so he comes up after work-hours one night and I teach him, and then
he comes up the next evening and works in the garden. It's very jolly,
because now I can plot things out my own way, and do them without
hurting my back. I'm going to clear all the old rose-bushes out of the
shady border. The trees are so big now, it's so shady that the roses
never come to anything but blight, and I mean to make a fernery there
instead. Bob says there's a little wood belonging to Lord Beckwith that
the trustees have cut down completely, and it's going to be ploughed up.
They're stubbing up the stumps now, and we can have as many as we like
for the carting away. Nothing makes such good ferneries, you get so many
crannies and corners. Bob says it's not far from the canal, and he
thinks he could borrow a hand-cart from the man that keeps the
post-office up there, and get a load or two down to the canal-bank, and
then fetch them down to our place in the _Adela_. Oh, how I wish you
were here to help! Jem's going to. He's awfully kind to me now you're
gone. Talking of the _Adela_ if you are very long away (and some
voyages last two or three years), I think I shall finish the garden, and
the croft and the orchard, or at any rate one journey round them; and I
think for another of your voyages I will do the log of the _Adela_ on
the canal, for with water-plants, and shells, and larvae, and beasts that
live in the banks, it would be splendid. Do you know, one might give a
whole book up easily to a list of nothing but willows and osiers, and
the different kinds of birds and insects that live in them. But the
number of kinds there are of some things is quite wonderful. What do you
think of more than a hundred species of iris, and I've only got five in
the garden, but o