t catch the post. I do hope my Head
Gardener is not in bed with rheumatic fever!!!! I trust your poor back
is rather easier?

Please most gratefully thank the girls for me.

Yours gratefully and affectionately,
J.H.E.

TO THE REV. J. GOING.

All Fools, 1884.

MY DEAR HEAD GARDENER,

You are too good, and--as to the confusion of one's principles is
sometimes the case--your virtues encourage my vices. You make me
greedy when I ought only to be grateful.

I've been too busy to write at once, and also somewhat of set purpose
abstained--for those bitter winds and hard-caked soil were not suited
for transplantation, and still less fit for you to be playing the part
of Honest Root-gatherer without your Cardigan Waistcoat!!!!

To-day

"a balmy south wind blows."

I feel convinced some poet says so. If not I do, and it's a fact.

Moreover by a superhuman--or anyhow a super-frail-feminine--effort
last Saturday as ever was I took up all that remained of the cabbage
garden--spread the heap of ashes, marked out another path by rule of
line (not of thumb, as I planted those things you took up and _set
straight_!), made my new walk, and edged it with the broken tiles that
came off our roof when "the stormy winds did blow"--an economy which
pleased me much. Thus I am now entirely flower-garden--and with room
for more flowers!!

Now to your kind offer. I think it will take rather more than 50
bunches of primroses to complete the bank according to your
plan--though not 100. Say 70: but if there are a few bunches to spare
I shall put them down that border where the laurels are, against the
wall under the ivy. They flower there, and other things don't.

Now about the wild daffodils--indeed I _would_ like some!!! I fear I
should like enough to do this: [_Sketch._]

These be the Poets' narcissus along the edge of the grass above the
strawberry bank, and I don't deny I think it would be nice to have a
row of wild Daffys (where the red marks are) to precede the same
narcissus next spring if we're spared! The Daffys to be planted _in
the grass_ of the grass-plat.

I doubt if less than two dozen clumps would 'do it handsome'!!!!!!!!

Now I want your good counsel. This is my back garden: [_Sketch._]

Next to Slugs and Snails (to which I have recently added a specimen
of)

Puppy Dog's Tails--

my worst enemy is--WIND!

The laurels are growing--for that matter, Xmas is coming!--but still
we are very shelt