ssing-table sacred to his picture, and to the
Bible, and the jar of Bridget's flowers, which stood before the likeness
as if it had been that of a patron saint.

For my own part I was very ignorant of the names and properties of
English flowers. I knew some by sight, from Adelaide St. Quentin's
bouquets, and from my great-grandfather's sketches; and I knew the names
of others of which Adolphe had given me plants, and of which I was glad
to see the flower. As I had plenty of pocket-money I was a liberal
customer, and I made old Bridget tell me the names of the flowers in her
bunches. I have since found out that whenever she was at fault she
composed a name upon the spot, with the ready wit and desire to please
characteristic of her nation. These names were chiefly connected with
the Blessed Virgin and the saints.

"The Lord blesh ye, my dear," she would say; "that's 'Mary's flower';"
or, "Sure it's the 'Blessed Virgin's spinning-wheel,' and a pretty name
too!"

A bitter-smelling herb which she commended to me as "Saints' Savory," I
afterwards learned to be tansy.

The youngest of us, a small, silent little orphan, had bought no posy
till one day she quietly observed, "If you could get me a peony, I would
buy it."

The peony was procured; so large, so round, and so red, that some one
unfeelingly suggested that it should be cut up for pickled cabbage. The
little miss walked home with it in her hand, looking at it as
sentimentally as if it had been a forget-me-not. As we had been
hard-hearted enough to laugh at it, we never learned the history which
made it dear.

Madame would certainly never have allowed us to break our ranks, and
chaffer with Bridget, but that some one had been lucky enough to think
of giving her bouquets.

Madame liked flowers--as ornaments--and was sentimental herself, after a
fashion, a sentimentality of appearances. She liked a bright spot of
colour on her sombre dresses too, and she was economical; for every day
that she had a bright bouquet a day's wear and tear was saved to her
neck-ribbons. She pinned the bright flowers by her very clean collar,
and not very clean throat, and permitted us to supply ourselves also
from Bridget's basket.

A less pleasant sign of summer than the lilac-blossom or Bridget's
flower-basket was the heat. It was hot in the dusty, draughty streets of
the little town. The empty bedrooms at Bush House were like ovens, and
the well-filled school-room was much worse.