gets such nice old-fashioned flowers,
"roots," and big ones too--very cheap! It's a most fascinating
_ruination by penny-worths_!

Good luck to you, dear, in your fresh settling down in the Heimath
Land.

Mrs. M---- (where we were _lunching_) asked tenderly after my large
young family--as strangers usually do. Then she said, "But you write
so sympathetically of children, and 'A Soldier's Children' is so
real--I thought they MUST be yours." On which I explained the
Dear Queers to her. To whom be love! and to Richard.

Ever, dear, yours lovingly,
J.H.E.

TO MRS. GOING.

Midsummer Day, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

Not a moment till now have I found--to tell you I got home safe and
sound, and that your delicious cream was duly and truly appreciated!

The last of it was merged in an admirable Gooseberry Fool!

The roses suffered by the hot journey--but even the least flourishing
of them received great admiration--from their size--as the skeletons
of saurians make a smaller world stand aghast!!!

This last sentence smacks of Jules Verne! I don't care much for
him--after all. It is rather _bookmaking_.

But I have had a lot of hearty laughs over "the Heroine"! It is very
funny--if not _very_ refined. Some of the situations admirable. There
is something in the girl's calling her father "Wilkinson" all the way
through--quite as comic as anything in _Vice Versa_--a book which I
never managed to get to the end of.

I hope your wedding went well to-day. My sister's--is postponed till
the 28th--for the convenience of the best man. If _by Thursday_ (you
must be a full two days' post from a Yorkshire country place) the
Master had _one or two_ Bouquet D'Or or other white or yellow roses
not very fully blown--and your handy Meta would wind wet rags about
their stalks and put them in an empty coffee-tin and despatch them by
parcels post to Miss Gatty, Ecclesfield Vicarage, Sheffield, Yorks,
they would be greatly welcomed to eke out the white decorations of my
Mother's grave for the wedding-day. I am wildly watering my Paris
Daisies--and hope to get some wild Ox-eye daisies also--as her name
was Margaret (and her pet name Meta!). I am applying prayers and
slopwater in equal proportions--like any Kelt!--to my Bouquet D'Or and
other white and yellow roses! I shall have some double white
Canterbury Bells, etc.--but there is coming a _lull_ in the flowers,
and they won't re-bloom much till we have rain.

Please give my