atly while she thought they came from Mrs. Mervyn's hothouse; but when
she found they were the product of her own furrows, voted them coarse,
ugly, withered things, such as only the simplicity of a Londoner could
bring into civilized society. So Honora stood over her gorgeous feathery
bouquet, not knowing whether to laugh or to be scornful, till Humfrey,
taking up the vase, inquired, 'May I have it for my study?'

'Oh! yes, and welcome,' said Honora, laughing, and shaking her glowing
tresses at him; 'I am thankful to any one who stands up for carrots.'

Good-natured Humfrey, thought she, it is all that I may not be mortified;
but after all it is not those very good-natured people who best
appreciate lofty actions. He is inviting Owen Sandbrook more because he
thinks it would please papa, and because he compassionates him in his
solitary lodgings, than because he feels the force of his glorious
self-sacrifice.

* * * * *

The northern slope of the Holt was clothed with fir plantations,
intersected with narrow paths, which gave admission to the depths of
their lonely woodland palace, supported on rudely straight columns, dark
save for the snowy exuding gum, roofed in by aspiring beam-like arms,
bearing aloft their long tufts of dark blue green foliage, floored by the
smooth, slippery, russet needle leaves as they fell, and perfumed by the
peculiar fresh smell of turpentine. It was a still and lonely place, the
very sounds making the silence more audible (if such an expression may be
used), the wind whispering like the rippling waves of the sea in the tops
of the pines, here and there the cry of a bird, or far, far away, the
tinkle of the sheep-bell, or the tone of the church clock; and of
movement there was almost as little, only the huge horse ants soberly
wending along their highway to their tall hillock thatched with pine
leaves, or the squirrel in the ruddy, russet livery of the scene, racing
from tree to tree, or sitting up with his feathery tail erect to extract
with his delicate paws the seed from the base of the fir-cone scale.
Squirrels there lived to a good old age, till their plumy tails had
turned white, for the squire's one fault in the eyes of keepers and
gardeners was that he was soft-hearted towards 'the varmint.'

A Canadian forest on a small scale, an extremely miniature scale indeed,
but still Canadian forests are of pine, and the Holt plantation was fir,
and firs