The next day was a delightful one in Dolly's experience. Mr. St. Leger
went back to town early in the morning; and as soon as she was free of
him, Dolly's delight began. She attended to her mother, and put her in
comfort; next, she examined the house and its capabilities, and
arranged the little household; and then she gave herself to the garden.
It was an unmitigated wilderness. The roses had grown into irregular,
wide-spreading shrubs, with waving, flaunting branches; yet sweet with
their burden of blushing flowers. Lilac bushes had passed all bounds,
and took up room most graspingly. Hawthorn and eglantine, roses of
Sharon and stocky syringas, and other bushes and climbers, had entwined
and confused their sprays and branches, till in places they formed an
impenetrable mass. In other places, and even in the midst of this
overgrown thicket, jessamine stars peeped out, lilies and violets grew
half smothered, mignonette ran along where it could; even carnations
and pinks were to be seen, in unhappy situations, and daisies and
larkspur and scarlet geraniums, lupins and sweet peas, and I know not
what more old-fashioned flowers, showed their fair faces here and
there. It was bewildering, and beyond Dolly's powers to put in order.
She wished for old Peter's arrival; and meantime cut and trimmed a
little here and there, gathered a nosegay of wildering blossoms,
considered what might be done, and lost herself in the sweet June day.

At last it was growing near lunch time, and she went in. Mrs. Copley
was lying on an old-fashioned lounge; and the room where she lay was
brown with old oak, quaint with its diamond-paned casement windows, and
cool with a general effect of wooden floor and little furniture; while
roses looked in at the open window, and the light was tempered by the
dark panelling and low ceiling. Dolly gave an exclamation of delight.

"What is it?" said Mrs. Copley fretfully.

"Mother, this place is so lovely! and this room,--do you know how
perfectly pretty it is?"

"It isn't half furnished. Not half."

"But it is furnished enough. There are only two of us; and certainly
here are all the things that we want, and a great deal more than we
want; and it is so pretty! so pretty!"

"How long do you suppose there are to be only two of us?"

"I don't know that, mother. Lawrence St. Leger is just gone, and I
don't want him back, for my part. In fact, I don't believe we have
dinner enough for three."

"That's an