A busy month, this. We got through a lot of rough work, which relieved us greatly when the growing season began in March.

The Paths. - The author had a great idea for having grass paths, because of their coolness in summer. He wanted them curving too, so that they should not look formal. It is not so easy as one might think to get an easy flowing curve in a path. We got our outline by laying down two lengths of cord, as far away from each other as the paths were to be wide, and arranging them to our taste. This answered. We got out all the weeds and rammed the soil hard before we laid the turf, and we beat the latter thoroughly.

The Dell. - On the western side of the garden there was a deep, wide hollow. It was so full of every objectionable weed that we wondered if some predecessor who did his gardening in a hurry had thrown all his weed roots into it, with the desperate idea of their choking each other. But weeds have a large, easy spirit of toleration. Their motto is, Live and let live. They lived, and they let each other live, in that dell. Apparently they had no theology, for they existed without discord. The dell split a large section of the garden in two, so we connected the two portions by bridging the dell. The "bridge" was really a heap of rubble faced with loose stones. We put an arch at each end, and a handrail along the sides.

The Spring Garden. - One half of the divided dell was turned into a spring garden by levelling the base and well soiling the sides. It was warm and sheltered - just the place for early bulbs, Forget-me-nots, coloured

Primroses, Violets, Irises, and other sweet and beautiful things. We filled it by degrees. Ranunculuses came in very useful, for they plant well in February, and are very cheap and handsome. You see beds of these in the Morrab Gardens at Penzance in April. Then there were the Poppy Anemones - most brilliant of flowers - and Daffodils. The value of the latter is that you can shift them almost any time in winter, even if they are growing fast.

The Rose Banks. - The other and bigger part of the dell was planted mainly with Creeping Roses, which were given low logs and prostrate branches of trees on which to ramble. Wilkins - good, patient, cheerful Wilkins - was not quite easy in his mind over Creeping Roses. He did not grow rebellious (Wilkins was never that, although he had had big places at his command, and now was merely general factotum to an author, who had a wife with fads), but he was a little critical in his smiling way. Standard Roses, Dwarf Roses, Pot Roses, Pillar Roses, Wall Roses - Wilkins had grown them all at The Highlands, and never a word of complaint about anything until he had grumbled about Miss Daisy's dog breaking a bed of Begonias all to pieces, and then a month's notice ("After fourteen years, sir, if you'll believe me, and me only thinking about the master all the time, that fond he was o' Begonias; but he never could stand against the missus") - any Roses you like, in short, but Creeping Roses, which he knew nothing about. The author interested him in them at last by telling him (it was a day or two after Mukden) that they came from Japan. And Wilkins, who had reconstructed the battlefield with tree stumps in his dinner-hour, and shown a gaping labourer how the fierce legions of Nogi and Oku had swept in on Kuropatkin's doomed forces, lifted his cap to efficiency. He boggled a little over the names of two of the Roses - - Wichuraiana rubra and Alberic Barbier - but he got on all right with Pink Roamer, Gardenia, Universal Favourite, and South Orange Perfection. We cut two bays at the middle of the narrow path that ran along the centre of the dell, where it was partially shaded by the branches of a large Elm, and here we built up a wall of tree roots and planted ferns.

[If you cut down trees properly - that is, by baring the stools and severing the roots on one side of the tree, then fastening ropes to strong branches on the other side, and bringing power (horse, if necessary) to bear - you can pull the stumps clean out. They are of no value as commercial timber, but they can be made good use of in the garden. Roughly built up, and packed with soil, they make splendid ferneries. Never have trees felled by cutting through close to the ground. The stumps and roots thus left in the soil are an intolerable nuisance in a garden.]

We got some of our ferns out of the woods, and bought others; the latter proved the most satisfactory.

The Kitchen Garden. - The last lingering uneasiness of Wilkins was dispelled when he was given leave to put on two labourers with a view to bringing a rough piece of waste into condition for a kitchen garden. His honest face beamed at the thought of having men under him again. Now, it seems rather odd, in view of the talk of the unemployed, but we scoured the neighbourhood for men, and could only secure one - an ancient of eighty-two! ("A bain't quite's quick as A was, sur, when I was only seventy-dree, but A reckon A be worth two shillin's a day now, sur, that A do," he said, in reply to a question about wages.)

The Ancient was put on, and, in emergency, a note was sent to the Union master, asking if he had an honest, reliable man in "the house." Alas! under Union rules, of which the author, Eunice, and Wilkins were alike ignorant, when a master gets an application for a labourer he must post it up, and likewise set at liberty every man who asks permission to apply for the job. They came n a stream - twenty-six all told - as choice a set as were ever maintained at the expense of a grateful country. By a singular coincidence, each worked with fury for an hour, asked for an advance of half a crown (readily decreased to twopence under protest), with which to go and get a crust ("Tur'ble poor feeding at the work'us, sir; crool poor I call it "), and never came back again.

We got one at last - bibulously inclined by night, report said, but a genuine worker by day, when he did as much as three ordinary agricultural labourers until the thoughtless present of an extra half-sovereign at the end of the month sent him off on a prolonged orgy, from which he never returned.

Wilkins was a little overcome by the quality of his staff, but he led it on bravely, and soon the ground was cleaned, dug, and manured. The Ancient was a source of much gratification to him in one respect, for, being deaf, he had to curl his hand round his ear and bellow "Hey?" three times at every order. And the giving of an order was as wine unto Wilkins. Before February was done, Broad Beans, Early Peas, Turnips, Spinach, and Radishes were sown.