rmanently down to the Small
House, and croquet there has become quite an institution.

And while I am on the subject of the garden I may also mention Mrs
Dale's conservatory, as to which Bell was strenuously of opinion that
the Great House had nothing to offer equal to it--"For flowers, of
course, I mean," she would say, correcting herself; for at the Great
House there was a grapery very celebrated. On this matter the squire
would be less tolerant than as regarded the croquet, and would tell
his niece that she knew nothing about flowers. "Perhaps not, Uncle
Christopher," she would say. "All the same, I like our geraniums
best;" for there was a spice of obstinacy about Miss Dale,--as,
indeed, there was in all the Dales, male and female, young and old.

It may be as well to explain that the care of this lawn and of this
conservatory, and, indeed, of the entire garden belonging to the
Small House, was in the hands of Hopkins, the head gardener to the
Great House; and it was so simply for this reason, that Mrs Dale
could not afford to keep a gardener herself. A working lad, at ten
shillings a week, who cleaned the knives and shoes, and dug the
ground, was the only male attendant on the three ladies. But Hopkins,
the head gardener of Allington, who had men under him, was as widely
awake to the lawn and the conservatory of the humbler establishment
as he was to the grapery, peach-walls, and terraces of the grander
one. In his eyes it was all one place. The Small House belonged to
his master, as indeed did the very furniture within it; and it was
lent, not let, to Mrs Dale. Hopkins, perhaps, did not love Mrs Dale,
seeing that he owed her no duty as one born a Dale. The two young
ladies he did love, and also snubbed in a very peremptory way
sometimes. To Mrs Dale he was coldly civil, always referring to the
squire if any direction worthy of special notice as concerning the
garden was given to him.

All this will serve to explain the terms on which Mrs Dale was living
at the Small House,--a matter needful of explanation sooner or later.
Her husband had been the youngest of three brothers, and in many
respects the brightest. Early in life he had gone up to London, and
there had done well as a land surveyor. He had done so well that
Government had employed him, and for some three or four years he had
enjoyed a large income, but death had come suddenly on him, while he
was only yet ascending the ladder; and, when he died, he had