state of his household he did not
know.

"I suppose," he said to himself one morning, with a mighty sigh, "I
suppose there is only one way out of it all. I really must take a liking
to red hair. Well! not just yet."

It was about ten o'clock in the morning when he said this, and he was
setting out to walk across the fields, and call for the first time on
Mrs. Frederic Walker. He was taking his three younger children with him
to make an apology to her.

Now that Mrs. Walker was a widow, she and Mr. Mortimer had half
unconsciously changed their manner slightly towards each other; they
were just as friendly as before, but not so familiar; the children,
however, were very intimate with her.

"She didn't want that bit of garden," argued little Hugh, as one who
felt aggrieved; "and when she saw that we had taken it she only
laughed."

The fact was, that finding a small piece of waste ground at the back of
Mrs. Walker's shrubbery, the children had dug it over, divided it with
oyster-shells into four portions, planted it with bulbs and roots, and
in their own opinion it was now theirs. They came rather frequently to
dig in it. Sometimes on these occasions they went in-doors to see "Mrs.
Nemily," and perhaps partake of bread and jam. Once they came in to
complain of her gardener, who had been weeding in _their_ gardens. They
wished her to forbid this. Emily laughed, and said she would.

Their course of honest industry was, however, discovered at last by the
twins; and now they were to give up the gardens, which seemed a sad
pity, just when they had been intending to put in spring crops.

Some people never really _have_ anything. It is not only that they can
get no good out of things (that is common even among those who are able
both to have and to hold), but that they don't know how to reign over
their possessions and appropriate them.

Their chattels appear to know this, and despise them; their dogs run
after other men; the best branches of their rose-trees climb over the
garden-wall, and people who smell at the flowers there appear to supply
a reason for any roses being planted inside. Such people always know
their weak point, and spend their own money as if they had stolen it.

The little Mortimers were not related to them. Here was a piece of
ground which nobody cultivated; it manifestly wanted owners; they took
it, weeded it, and flung out all the weeds into Mrs. Walker's garden.

The morning was warm; a south