spring afterwards,
and took to his old haunt in the basin, one would have supposed he found
out the change that had taken place, for the creature was quite
restless; and I often found him out of the water, and making his way
about the garden, as if in search of something; and for a long, long
time, old Ralph and he--for Ralph is living, sir, and you will see him
presently--he and the old raven were the only living creatures, beside
the birds, that did not desert the poor old place--except myself indeed.
I could never keep away from it a whole day together, and I used to come
here to feed old Ralph too; for it was long before we could lure him to
the cottage for his food, and now he is almost always here, and hides
himself for the most part in the great bay-tree there in the corner,
where part of the north gable is still standing."

As he spoke, we coasted leisurely along the hedge-side walk, as
carefully (though almost unconsciously) avoiding to tread the beds it
skirted, as if they were still filled with choice flowers, or fragrant
and aromatic herbs, or matted hoops, or hand-glasses guarding the rarer
or tenderer plants, bulbs, and auriculas, once (L---- observed) the
pride of that small garden. The forms of those fair flower-knots were
still discernible from their edgings of thrift, box, daisy, London
pride, now grown, however, into perfect hedges, where still untrampled,
or into ragged bushes, still indicating the once clipt line of
geometrical exactness, as each bed radiated to a centre, where lay the
little basin with its fairy fountain before alluded to. Some large stone
flower-pots, green and discoloured with damp and weather-stains, were
still standing round it in mockery of decoration. From two or three shot
up a luxuriant growth of common weeds; in one, a beautiful foxglove,
exulting as it were in plebeian pride and brilliancy over its
aristocratical neighbour in an adjoining vase, a delicate and sickly
Persian lilac, whose pensile sprays drooped languidly even under their
scanty growth of yellow leaves and pale and stunted blossoms. Here and
there, within the flower-knots, bloomed a tuft of double white
narcissus, struggling through grass and matted vegetation. Some tall
fris's, white lilies, and other hardy flowers, had also shot up into
beauty or fair promise; but the elegant moss-rose drooped to the earth,
as if in sorrow, and its half-blighted buds lay cankering on the
moss-grown path. The scene, desolat