can get past the 'ouse without stopping to gape at it! But when
her American lodger leaves her, she asks,--and who is she that can
expect to keep a beautiful young lady who will be naming her own cottage
and painting signboards for herself before long, likely?--but when
her American lodger is gone, how is she, Mrs. Bobby, to put by a few
shillings a month towards the debt on the cottage? These are some of the
problems she presents to me. I have turned them over and over in my mind
as I have worked, and even asked Willie Beresford in my weekly letter
what he could suggest. Of course he could not suggest anything: men
never can; although he offered to come there and lodge for a month at
twenty-five pounds a week. All at once, one morning, a happy idea struck
me, and I ran down to Mrs. Bobby, who was weeding the onion-bed in the
back garden.

"Mrs. Bobby," I said, sitting down comfortably on the edge of the
lettuce-frame, "I am sure I know how you can earn many a shilling during
the summer and autumn months, and you must begin the experiment while
I am here to advise you. I want you to serve five-o'clock tea in your
garden."

"But, miss, thanking you kindly, nobody would think of stoppin' 'ere for
a cup of tea once in a twelvemonth."

"You never know what people will do until you try them. People will do
almost anything, Mrs. Bobby, if you only put it into their heads, and
this is the way we shall make our suggestion to the public. I will paint
a second signboard to hang below 'Comfort Cottage.' It will be much more
beautiful than the other, for it shall have a steaming kettle on it,
and a cup and saucer, and the words 'Tea Served Here' underneath, the
letters all intertwined with tea-plants. I don't know how tea-plants
look, but then neither does the public. You will set one round table on
the porch, so that if it threatens rain, as it sometimes does, you know,
in England, people will not be afraid to sit down; and the other
you will put under the yew-tree near the gate. The tables must be
immaculate; no spotted, rumpled cloths and chipped cups at Comfort
Cottage, which is to be a strictly first-class tea station. You will
put vases of flowers on the tables, and you will not mix red, yellow,
purple, and blue ones in the same vase-"

"It's the way the good Lord mixes 'em in the fields," interjected Mrs.
Bobby piously.

"Very likely; but you will permit me to remark that the good Lord can
manage things successfully wh