ndow-gardening. And you should see the house-front!--the balcony that
will be a perfect bower presently. My window-boxes, the gayest mosaics of
color, and the vestibule lined with callas, acacias, and heath--against a
background of ferns and ivy. We were never so magnificent before, and it
was Ronayne's surprise for me when we came back from the sea--he having
given our florist _carte-blanche_; whereas I, bearing a conscience, have
bargained with him always, and carefully counted my pots.

Mrs. Malise's disciplinary Johanna brought her charge for a little
visit to my nursery yesterday. And my heart aches so for that baby!
He's a great child, well made, and with his mother's wonderful
eyes--but so heavy, listless--"Meek as a work'us' child brought up on
skilly," Ronayne renders it--and though he's perfectly clean now, and
comfortably clad, nobody would dream he was a young mother's first
baby, so ornamentless and sombre-hued are his little garments.

Nurse brings back indignant accounts of the way he's left to amuse
himself, or cry his fill, when out for an airing in Kensington Gardens.
"Hours, ma'am, she keep that poor thing a-frettin' or a-sleepin' in his
perambulator, the east wind a-cuttin' about him as draughty as
draughty, while she sits on a bench a-makin' her foolish lace or
talkin' to some of them German bandmen. He never gets taken out, nor
played with, nor has any playthings. It's just cruelty to
animals--that's what it is!" finishes my nursery dragon, who is as
soft-hearted as she is grim of exterior and grammatically independent
in speech.

Mrs. Malise has been absent at suffrage meetings in Scotland and
Ireland for a month past, Miss Hedges told me when dining here just
after our return. Mrs. Stainton, the porcelain widow, was invited also,
and a curious and wonderfully interesting person we find her: the
daintiest small creature--complexion like an ivory painting, deep-set,
seeress eyes, and looking fairly spirit-like for fragility, in her long
black dress and white lace shawl. Nothing could well be more piquant
than to hear this filmy little thing, in a voice that would have fitted
Queen Mab, recount her experiences in the most widely separated circles
of life and thought, or quietly give utterance to quaint, audacious
speculations, as to mysteries that perplex so many of us concerning
this existence and the eternity it preludes. "If there be a hereafter!"
I heard some one answer to a remark of hers. "A