1 14 IDLEHURST : 



the St. John's Wood associations. As we sauntered 

 round the garden, the two girls presented a very 

 pleasant difference of good looks. They are both a 

 bare twenty. Margaret is something tall, round- 

 armed, fiaOvKo\7ros, with a fine poise of the head, 

 grey eyes looking very straight out of a sunburnt face, 

 dark brown hair wound voluminous in shining braids. 

 Helen is a head shorter, slight, with childish hands ; 

 her face defying all superlatives in dark blue eyes, 

 pathetic, gay, unfathomable by fits ; cloudy hair no 

 nameable colour but beautiful ; dog-rose bloom of 

 the cheek ; all the inexplicable differences of curve 

 and angle which make the features of regnant Beauty. 

 The clouds were breaking out in gaps of moist 

 blue, and the sun flushing over the dripping woods, 

 as we made the tour of the garden to inspect the 

 iris-beds blue German and pearly Florentine, and 

 all the bronze and mauve and yellow glories 

 Hortense and Alfred Fidler, Queen of May, Victorine, 

 Nancy, and the rest and the paeonies, laying their 

 great heads about the borders, fading from crimson 

 to pink and white. Miss Cottingham, with her head 

 a little on one side, and one eye shut, regards what she 

 calls a " perfect bit " a group of iris backed by the 

 dark of the clipped yew and the grey and golden 

 lichens of Pomona, the broken-nosed garden goddess 



