nd, looking up, the crew were aware of
many people standing there and chattering in the dusk--chattering in
the low soft tone peculiar to the Islanders. The skipper hailed them in
Dutch, and again in French, these being the only languages he spoke.
The Islanders, helping him ashore, made signs that they could not
answer, but took him and his men up the hill to the Garrison, then
commanded by a Colonel Bartlemy.

Colonel Bartlemy could speak French after a fashion, and so could his
excellent wife. Between them they entertained the wanderers hospitably
for the space of five days, at the end of which the Dutchman went his
way before a clear north wind, and in charge of an Island pilot. But
before departing he presented his hosts--it was all that either he
could give or they would permit themselves to accept--with a quantity
of remarkably fine bulbs from his cargo.

Now, possibly, being a Dutchman, he took it for granted that anyone
could recognise these bulbs for what they were. But Mrs. Bartlemy did
not; for she had spent the most of her life in various garrisons, which
afford few opportunities for gardening. None the less, she was, for a
soldier's wife, a first-rate housekeeper; and, supposing these bulbs to
be onions of peculiar rarity, she forthwith issued invitations to the
_elite_ of the Island, and ordered over a leg of Welsh mutton from the
mainland. I will not attempt to tell of the dinner that ensued: for
Miss Gabriel made the story her own, and everyone who heard her relate
it after one of Garland Town's _petits soupers_--as she frequently did
by special request--declared it to be inimitable. Suffice it to say
that the tulips were boiled, but not eaten.

A few bulbs, of smaller size, escaped the pot, and Mrs. Bartlemy, in
her mortification, ordered the cook to throw them away, or (in the
language of the Islands) to "heave them to cliff." The cook cast them
out upon a bed of rubbish in a corner of the garrison garden, where
by-and-by they were covered with fresh rubbish, under which they
sprouted; and, next spring, lo! the midden heap had become a mound of
glorious trumpet daffodils!

So they were left to blossom, refreshing the eyes of successive
Commandants year after year as March came round and the March
nor'-westers set their yellow bells waving against the blue sea. Major
Vigoureux delighted in them--were they not his name-flower? But no one
took pains to cultivate them, as no one suspected their great