r for being free from
visions of the kind, for as I grew older, uncomfortable doubts laid
hold of my heart with cold fingers, dim uncertainties as to the
exact ultimate position of the gardener and the governess, anxious
questionings as to how it would be if it were they who turned out after
all to be sheep, and I who--? For that we all three might be gathered
into the same fold at the last never, in those days, struck me as
possible, and if it had I should not have liked it.

"Now what sort of person can that be," I asked myself, shaking my head,
as I contemplated the changes before me, "who could put a rockery among
vegetables and currant bushes? A rockery, of all things in the gardening
world, needs consummate tact in its treatment. It is easier to make
mistakes in forming a rockery than in any other garden scheme. Either it
is a great success, or it is great failure; either it is very charming,
or it is very absurd. There is no state between the sublime and
the ridiculous possible in a rockery." I stood shaking my head
disapprovingly at the rockery before me, lost in these reflections, when
a sudden quick pattering of feet coming along in a great hurry made me
turn round with a start, just in time to receive the shock of a body
tumbling out of the mist and knocking violently against me.

It was a little girl of about twelve years old.

"Hullo!" said the little girl in excellent English; and then we stared
at each other in astonishment.

"I thought you were Miss Robinson," said the little girl, offering no
apology for having nearly knocked me down. "Who are you?"

"Miss Robinson? Miss Robinson?" I repeated, my eyes fixed on the little
girl's face, and a host of memories stirring within me. "Why, didn't she
marry a missionary, and go out to some place where they ate him?"

The little girl stared harder. "Ate him? Marry? What, has she been
married all this time to somebody who's been eaten and never let on? Oh,
I say, what a game!" And she threw back her head and laughed till the
garden rang again.

"O hush, you dreadful little girl!" I implored, catching her by the arm,
and terrified beyond measure by the loudness of her mirth. "Don't make
that horrid noise--we are certain to be caught if you don't stop----"

The little girl broke off a shriek of laughter in the middle and shut
her mouth with a snap. Her eyes, round and black and shiny like boot
buttons, came still further out of her head. "Caught?" she said e