The Happy Garden 



You like the fireplace ? I'm not sure whether 

 I designed it myself, or whether it happened. I hope 

 it happened, and at any rate I shall say it did. 

 Plain bricks, you see, built in an undistinguished 

 pattern. The draught is got from a grating outside, 

 and a fine blaze we can make with pine cones and 

 branches, a fire so cheery that it must thaw and 

 dissolve the coldest reserve. The flames flicker and 

 lick the green needles of the branches, which shrivel 

 into glowing, red-hot spears, and the sparks go 

 flying ; we throw on logs, and the fire roars and 

 the cones open crackling. 



Most of the woodwork is painted apple -green. 

 The walls are white, and so are the door and window 

 frames, so that you can have the chintzes as riotous 

 as may be. The rosewood spinet adores the flowers 

 in the summer, though, poor thing, it can only tell 

 you so with half the compass of its notes, and those 

 cracked ; but it gains expression in the scent that 

 comes from the bowl'of lavender there by the round 

 window, and it finds company in some of the 

 pictures, old engravings of its period : 



" Cupid stung by a Bee" 



Bless him ! There he is taking comfort with a 

 round-legged lady, who could never understand the 

 woes of child or man ; and she is almost as charm- 

 ingly stupid as the Curly-headed Family over there : 



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