inquired Harry.

"A greenhouse where the mercury stands below 50 deg. Jonquils, tulips,
hyacinths and lilies, and most other Easter plants, need warmer air than
that to grow rapidly in. The 'cold houses' are not neglected, for they
have a certain amount of moisture and sunshine allowed them too, or the
plants would die.

"As the happy day draws nearer and nearer, great activity reigns in the
greenhouses: batches of plants are seen going back to the 'warm houses,'
and such a showering, sponging, snipping and training, and general
petting going on, that if plants had any brains, they would go mad with
it all. But as they are not troubled with brains, they enjoy the warm
sunshine, and the gentle vapors that rise steaming from the earth, and
just set themselves to blossoming and looking as lovely as they can."

"So it takes earth, sunshine, wind, and water to raise flowers?" said
Harry.

"Yes, and labor and knowledge."

Here the flower lecture ended, for we were at the greenhouse gates. In
another moment a door was opened, and we were ushered into a world of
beauty.

"How lovely!" cried Nell, looking down the green aisles of the "azalea
house."

"They look like swarms of great white butterflies among the dark
leaves," remarked Harry.

"Or giant snow-flakes ready to melt or blow away," suggested Nell.

"If you call those white azaleas so handsome, I wonder what you will say
to these!" exclaimed the florist, opening wide the door of a "lily
house."

"Come here, children," cried I. "Was there ever a more heavenly sight
than these hosts of lilies holding up their white chalices to the
flooding sunshine?"

"Or anything more delicious?" murmured Nell, bending lovingly over a
group of Ascension lilies.

Further on there were ranks and ranks of tall callas, stately as
sceptred queens, starry narcissus, white as snow, and jasmine
bouvardias, with ivory tube-like blossoms in fragrant clusters.

Something "new, and strange, and sweet" greeted us at every step. Here
it was a Deutzia, with starry cup-like blossoms; there a Spiraea, with
spikes of milk-white plumes; here sprays of creamy Lantanas, and yonder
clusters of tasselled Ageratum.

"Don't go yet," pleaded Nell and Harry, as I turned to leave.

"You'll admire the 'rosery' more than this," said the gardener, opening
another door, and standing aside.

A marvellous fragrance saluted us as we looked down the long ranks of
tall nyphetos shrubs laden with hundred