ome, and wonder if I shall ever see it again! There
is a certain pleasant window of the family parlor, looking out into the
garden, and sometimes, when I sit alone at evening, I dream that I am
sitting at that window, enjoying the long English twilight. I seem to
see one very dear to me, flitting lightly about among the flowers,
singing low, and smiling to herself, because her heart is made so glad
by their beauty and their fragrance. And the flowers seem to know her,
and bend to her and claim relationship with her--the roses for her
bloom, the lilies for her white dress and innocent look, while the
violets kiss her feet, as she passes, because she is good.

I can almost hear the good-night song of the blackbird, before he goes
to sleep among the golden laburnum boughs; can almost smell the
good-night sigh of the flowers, as they nod their sleepy heads and
swing lazily in the evening wind.

Just across the heath lives another dear friend, Mrs. Crosland, whom my
little readers know. When going to visit her, I never chose to ride,
enjoying much more that walk across the heath. Here the air was always
fresh and cool, and the winds, without a tree or house to obstruct
them, had a bold, strong, frolicsome sweep, as though glad to be free
of both forest and town.

The ground of this heath is smooth, and gently rolling. It does not
grow the heather, but is covered everywhere with a firm turf of fine
grass, which, thanks to frequent showers, always looks soft and green,
though it is kept very closely cropped.

In pleasant summer weather there can always be seen ranged along one
side of this heath, queer little pony chaises, donkey carts, goat
carriages, and ponies and donkeys saddled and bridled, all waiting to
be let to invalids and children, by the hour, or for the ride.

It was very amusing, on Saturday afternoons, to see school children
consoling themselves for the week's confinement and study, by a wild
pony trot, or a scrambling donkey gallop across the heath. Wild girls,
with gipsy bonnets falling on their shoulders, and their long hair
flying in the wind; wilder boys, with their satchels bobbing at their
backs, their hats swung in the air, and their feet remorselessly
digging into the sides of the poor little bewildered beasts who carried
them.

"Great fun!" "splendid sport!" they said it was, when they dismounted
and paid their six-pence, but perhaps the ponies and donkeys had an
opinion of their own on t