hope could be gathered from that quarter.
The Phoebus was gone. So much was clear; and our loss being fully
ascertained, we all began, as the custom is, to divert our grief and
exercise our ingenuity by different guesses as to the fate of the
vanished treasure.

My father, although certain that he had written the label, and wired the
root, had his misgivings about the place in which it had been deposited,
and half suspected that it had slipt in amongst a basket which we had
sent as a present to Ireland; I myself, judging from a similar accident
which had once happened to a choice hyacinth bulb, partly thought that
one or other of us might have put it for care and safety in some such
very snug corner, that it would be six months or more before it turned
up; John, impressed with a high notion of the money-value of the
property and estimating it something as a keeper of the regalia might
estimate the most precious of the crown jewels, boldly affirmed that it
was stolen; and Dick, who had just had a demele with the cook, upon
the score of her refusal to dress a beef-steak for a sick greyhound,
asserted, between jest and earnest, that that hard-hearted official
had either ignorantly or maliciously boiled the root for a Jerusalem
artichoke, and that we, who stood lamenting over our regretted Phoebus,
had actually eaten it, dished up with white sauce. John turned pale at
the thought. The beautiful story of the Falcon, in Boccaccio, which the
young knight killed to regale his mistress, or the still more tragical
history of Couci, who minced his rival's heart, and served it up to his
wife, could not have affected him more deeply. We grieved over our lost
dahlia, as if it had been a thing of life.

Grieving, however, would not repair our loss; and we determined, as the
only chance of becoming again possessed of this beautiful flower,
to visit, as soon as the dahlia season began, all the celebrated
collections in the neighbourhood, especially all those from which there
was any chance of our having procured the root which had so mysteriously
vanished.

Early in September, I set forth on my voyage of discovery--my voyages,
I ought to say; for every day I and my pony-phaeton made our way to
whatever garden within our reach bore a sufficiently high character to
be suspected of harbouring the good Dahlia Phoebus.

Monday we called at Lady A.'s; Tuesday at General B's; Wednesday at Sir
John C's; Thursday at Mrs. D's; Friday at Lord