o see, she owned that she felt safer and more at her ease in the
arms of "her own Allie," and so when it was possible, it was in
Allison's arms that she was brought home.

If there had been nothing else to commend her to the pleased notice of
Mrs Esselmont, Allison's devotion to the child must have done so. And
this stately young woman, with her soft voice, and her silence, and her
beautiful, sorrowful eyes, was worth observing for her own sake. But
Allison was as silent with her as with the rest of her little world,
though her smile grew brighter and more responsive as the days went on.

Mrs Esselmont's house stood on the hillside, facing the west. Behind
it rose the seven dark firs which had given to the place its name. The
tall firs and the hilltop hid from the house the sunshine of the early
morning, but they stood a welcome shelter between it and the bleak east
wind which came from the sea when the dreary time of the year had come.

The house was built of dull grey stone, with no attempt at ornament of
any kind visible upon it. All its beauty was due to the ivy, which grew
close and thick over the two ends, covering the high gables, and even
the chimneys, and creeping more loosely about the windows in the front.
Without the ivy and the two laburnums, which were scattering their
golden blossoms over the grass when Allison saw it first, the place
would have looked gloomy and sad.

But when one had fairly passed up the avenue, or rather the lane, lying
between a hedge of hawthorn on one side and the rough stone dike which
marked the bounds of the nearest neighbour on the other, and entered at
the gate which opened on the lawn, it was not the dull grey house which
one noticed first, but the garden.

"The lovely, _lovely_ garden!" Marjorie always called it. She had not
seen many gardens, nor had Allison, and the wealth of blossoms which
covered every spot where the green grass was not growing, was wonderful
in their eyes.

The place was kept in order by an old man, who had long been gardener at
Esselmont House, and it was as well kept in the absence of the mistress
as when she was there to see it. The garden was full of roses, and of
the common sweet-smelling flowers, for which there seems little room in
fine gardens nowadays, and it was tended by one who loved flowers for
their own sake.

It was shut in and sheltered by a high stone wall on the east, and by a
hawthorn hedge on the north, but the walls on