so delicately tinted and the
petals so gracefully winged that it seemed like picking handfuls of
butterflies.

Maria Maxwell has shown me how, by looking at the stamens, I can tell if
the flower is newly opened, for by picking only such they will last two
full days. How lasting are youthful impressions! She remembers all these
things, though she has had no very own garden these ten years and more.
Will the Infant remember creeping into my cot in these summer mornings,
cuddling and being crooned to like a veritable nestling, until her
father gains sufficient consciousness to take his turn and delight her
by the whistled imitation of a few simple bird songs? Yes, I think so,
and I would rather give her this sort of safeguard to keep off harmful
thoughts and influences than any worldly wisdom.

The poppies I arranged in my smallest frosted-white and cut-glass vases
in two rows on the mantel-shelf, before the quaint old oblong mirror,
making it look like a miniature shrine. Celia Thaxter had this way of
using them, if I remember rightly, the reflection in the glass doubling
the beauty and making the frail things seem alive!

For the library, where oak and blue are the prevailing tints, I filled a
silver tankard with a big bunch of blue cornflowers, encircled by the
leaves of "dusty miller," and placed it on the desk.

The dining-room walls are of deep dark red that must be kept cool in
summer. At all seasons I try to have the table decorations low enough
not to oblige us to peer at one another through a green mist, and to-day
I made a wreath of hay-scented ferns and ruby-spotted Japan lilies
(_Speciosum rubrum_, the tag says--they were sent as extras with my
seeds), by combining two half-moon dishes, and in the middle set a
slender, finely cut, flaring vase holding two perfect stems, each
bearing half a dozen lily buds and blossoms. These random bulbs are the
first lilies of my own planting. There are a few stalks of the white
Madonna lilies in the grass of the old garden and a colony of tiger
lilies and an upright red lily with different sort of leaves, all
clustered at the root, following the tumble-down wall, the rockery to
be. I am fascinated by these Japanese lilies and desire more, each stalk
is so sturdy, each flower so beautifully finished and set with jewels
and then powdered with gold, as it were. Pray tell me something about
the rest of the family! Do they come within my range and pocket, think
you? The first