orthern winter; but they did face it under
fir branches and leaves, and not one has suffered, and they are looking
to-day as happy and as determined to enjoy themselves as any roses, I am
sure, in Europe.

May 14th.--To-day I am writing on the verandah with the three babies,
more persistent than mosquitoes, raging round me, and already several of
the thirty fingers have been in the ink-pot and the owners consoled when
duty pointed to rebukes. But who can rebuke such penitent and drooping
sunbonnets? I can see nothing but sunbonnets and pinafores and nimble
black legs.

These three, their patient nurse, myself, the gardener, and the
gardener's assistant, are the only people who ever go into my garden,
but then neither are we ever out of it. The gardener has been here a
year and has given me notice regularly on the first of every month, but
up to now has been induced to stay on. On the first of this month he
came as usual, and with determination written on every feature told me
he intended to go in June, and that nothing should alter his decision.
I don't think he knows much about gardening, but he can at least dig and
water, and some of the things he sows come up, and some of the plants
he plants grow, besides which he is the most unflaggingly industrious
person I ever saw, and has the great merit of never appearing to take
the faintest interest in what we do in the garden. So I have tried to
keep him on, not knowing what the next one may be like, and when I asked
him what he had to complain of and he replied "Nothing," I could only
conclude that he has a personal objection to me because of my eccentric
preference for plants in groups rather than plants in lines. Perhaps,
too, he does not like the extracts from gardening books I read to him
sometimes when he is planting or sowing something new. Being so helpless
myself, I thought it simpler, instead of explaining, to take the
book itself out to him and let him have wisdom at its very source,
administering it in doses while he worked. I quite recognise that this
must be annoying, and only my anxiety not to lose a whole year through
some stupid mistake has given me the courage to do it. I laugh
sometimes behind the book at his disgusted face, and wish we could be
photographed, so that I may be reminded in twenty years' time, when the
garden is a bower of loveliness and I learned in all its ways, of my
first happy struggles and failures.

All through April he was putting