e Spring
the School might be taking holiday, and Harry might be striding off on
a week or 10 days' country "breathe,"--and perhaps you would come to
me? Or if he were inclined for fresh fields and pastures new, that you
would come together, and he might make his head-quarters here, and go
over to Glastonbury, etc., etc., etc., whilst we took matters more
quietly at home?

I feel it is a long way to come, but it would be so very pleasant to
me to welcome you under my own roof!

If you cannot get away in Spring, I _must_ persuade you when London
gets hotter and less pleasant!

You _must_ miss your country home--and yet I envy you a few things!
London has cords of charm to attract in many ways! I wish I could _fly
over_, and see the Sir Joshuas and one or two things.

(I am stubbornly indifferent to the _Spectator's_ dictum that we like
"Sir Joshuas" because we are a nation of snobs!!!)

Ever affectionately yours,
JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

Do tell me what hope there is of seeing you--and showing you your own
bramble on my own wall!

TO MRS. GOING.

March 11, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

I do not think you will ever let me have my Head Gardener here again!

I CAN'T take care of him!

I really could have sat down on the door-step and cried--when our old
cabby--"the family coachman" as we call him, arrived and had missed
Mr. Going. How _he_ did not miss his train, I cannot conceive! He must
have run--he must have flown--he _must_ be a bit uncanny--and the
flap-ends of the comforter must have spread into wings--or our clocks
must have been beforehand--or the trains were behindhand--

Obviously luck favours him!!

But where was his great-coat?--

He got very damp--and there was no time to hang him out to dry!

Tell him with my love--I have been nailing up the children in the way
they should go--and have made a real hedge of cuttings!

I wish the Weeding Woman could see my old Yorkshire "rack." It and its
china always lend themselves to flowers, I think. The old English
coffee-cups are full of primroses. In a madder-crimson Valery pot are
Lent lilies--and the same in a peacock-blue fellow of a pinched and
selfish shape. The white violets are in a pale grey-green jar (a
miniature household jar) of Marseilles pottery. The polyanthuses
singularly become a pet _Jap_ pot of mine of pale yellow with white
and black design on it--and a gold dragon--and a turquoise-coloured
lower rim.

I am VERY flowery. I mus