meant that sweet, lazy-busy hum of bees and
butterflies and all sorts of living creatures
that you never hear except in a real old-
fashioned garden where there are lots of clove-
pinks and sweet-williams and roses; roses es-
pecially, — great, big cabbage-roses, and dear
little pink climbing roses, the kind that peep
in at a cottage window to bid you “ good-morn-
ing.” Oh, how very sweet those old-fashioned
flowers are! though “ rose fanciers,” and all the
clever gardeners we have nowadays, wouldn't
give anything for them! J think them the
sweetest of all. Don’t you, children? Or is
it only when one begins to grow old-fashioned
one’s self, and to care more for things that used
to be than things that are now, that one gets
to prize these old friends so?

I am wandering away from Floss and Car-
rots waiting for nurse in the cottage garden.
You must forgive me, boys and girls. When
people begin to grow old, they get in the habit
of telling stories in a rambling way; but I don’t

find children so hard upon this tiresome habit |