d from time to
time into my hands, received from the sales of produce, were far
greater than I could possibly spend in gratifying any taste of my own;
and, as I presently found, the idea that the surplus might indulge
those of the ladies never entered their minds.

Before we had been settled in our home for three days Eveena had made
two requests which I was well pleased to grant. First, she entreated
that I would teach her one at least of the languages with which I was
familiar--a task of whose extreme difficulty she had little idea.
Compared with her native tongue, the complication and irregularities
of the simplest language spoken on Earth are far more arbitrary and
provoking than seems the most difficult of ancient or Oriental tongues
to a Frenchman or Italian. In order to fulfil my promise that she
should assist me in recording my observations and writing out my
notes, I chose Latin. Unhappily for her, I found myself as impatient
and unsuccessful as I was inexperienced in teaching; and nothing but
her exquisite gentleness and forbearance could have made the lessons
otherwise than painful to us both. Well for me that the "right to
govern wrong" was to her a simple truth--an inalienable marital
privilege, to be met with that unqualified submission which must have
shamed the worst temper into self-control. Eive on one occasion made a
similar request; but besides that I realised the convenience of a
medium of communication understood by ourselves alone, I had no
inclination to expose either my own temper or Eive's to the trial.
Eveena's second request came naturally from one whose favourite
amusement had been the raising and modification of flowers. She asked
to be entrusted with the charge of the seeds I had brought from Earth,
and to be permitted to form a bed in the peristyle for the purpose of
the experiment. Though this disfigured the perfect arrangement of the
garden, I was delighted to have so important and interesting a problem
worked out by hands so skilful and so careful. I should probably have
failed to rear a single plant, even had I been familiar with those
applications of electricity to the purpose which are so extensively
employed in Mars. Eveena managed to produce specimens strangely
altered, sometimes stunted, sometimes greatly improved, from about
one-fourth of the seeds entrusted to her; and among those with which
she was most brilliantly successful were some specimens of Turkish
roses, the roses of