word.

And indeed for some time she was tolerably thorough, watering the
plants and loosening the soil about their roots; sponging the leaves of
the rubber trees and palms and picking off all the shriveled leaves and
faded petals from the flowering shrubs and keeping the temperature at
as nearly the right degree as was possible with such varying weather
and their simple device for heating the place.

But she found it was much more of a tax than she had first supposed.
At the start plants had seemed so much more inviting than dishes that
she had appropriated the care of them at once, and now that she
discovered what her selection really involved she felt almost
aggrieved, and was inclined to be cross when she saw Miss Blake's tasks
finished for the day while her own was scarcely more than begun.

"Provoking things!" she would declare as she dashed a double spray of
water on the rubber trees that did not need it, and gave but a mere
sprinkle to the blossoming azalias that did: "if I'd known what a
nuisance you were I can tell you I never would have taken you! Here!
will you come off, or won't you?" and she would give some wilted
blossom a vicious jerk that would set the entire plant shaking in its
pot as though it were trembling with distress at the rough treatment it
was receiving. If Miss Blake heard her she gave no sign. Sometimes
when they passed a florist's window she would stop and look wistfully
in at the bewildering display, and Nan would know that she was longing
to go in and buy some especially fascinating orchid or unusually rare
crysanthemum. But she would not yield to her impulse, for on one
occasion the girl had said with a shrug of impatience:

"For goodness' sake don't get any more. It's all I can do to attend to
the bothersome things now. I wish they were all in Hong Kong--every
one of them."

[Illustration: "Provoking things!"]

So since then there had been no further additions to the conservatory,
and Miss Blake had to check her horticultural ardor or confine it to
her window-sill upstairs.

But the plants throve in spite of their ungracious nursing, and when
she was not irritated by them Nan was very proud of the fine showing
they made.

"I think that double, white azalia is one of most beautiful things I
ever saw: so pure and delicate!" said Mary Brewster to Miss Blake,
hanging over it in honest admiration one leaden-skied day when she come
to carry Nan off to her house to dinner and