dding a very
picturesque feature to the scene. There was a long flagged terrace, with
dandelions pushing up between the stones, and roses, grown almost wild,
climbing in glorious profusion over the balustrade, while a flight of
steps led down to the ladies' pleasaunce, where the narrow grass walks
were bordered with box-edgings, and pink daisies and forget-me-nots were
trying to struggle through the weeds in the neglected beds. In the
centre was a sun-dial with twisted shaft, and an inscription round the
capital. We rubbed away the moss which covered the worn letters, and
spelt out the words, written in old English characters:

"NESCIES + QUA + HORA + VIGILA",

which we were not Latin scholars enough at the time to be able to
translate, but which I afterwards learnt meant "Thou knowest not at what
hour. Watch!" I wondered, as I looked, how many footsteps, in the
centuries that had fled, had passed up and down that terraced walk, and
how many quaint little maidens as young and gay as we, had come to tell
the time by that dial, and had read that same motto, "wrought in dead
days by men a long while dead". The blossom from the almond-tree above
fell on us like pink snow, and a thrush in the lilac bush was ruffling
every feather on his little throat in the rapture of his spring song.

"If I could choose any spot in the world I wished, I think I should come
to live here," I said, with a long sigh of content as I looked over the
sweet-brier fence down the valley to where in the distance gleamed the
bay, a faint gray streak against a patch of yellow sand, with the
outline of the fells rising up misty and blue behind. Cathy smiled.

"You haven't seen the house yet," she said. "You couldn't live only in a
garden."

"I should like to," I replied. "I'd any time rather have a cottage with
a beautiful garden, than the most splendid mansion without one. I think
out-of-doors is so much nicer than indoors. Perhaps it's my bringing up.
In San Carlos we lived mostly in the verandah and on the terrace."

The house proved to be a quaint old stone manor, not large, and quite
unpretentious, the kind of dwelling that was built in days gone by for
the younger sons of gentry, who farmed a little land, and rode to
hounds. Cathy begged the key from the care-taker at the lodge, and we
wandered round the panelled rooms, wondering at the black oak beams of
the ceilings, and the delightful ingle-nooks of the wide old-fashioned
fireplaces.