284 



HOME AND FLOWERS 



After a little Miss Betty began to grow 

 fidgety. 



^^Mebbe she's gone into a fit/' she 

 thought. "Chikiren do, sometimes, I've 

 heard say, when they're 'fraid o' the dark." 



She tiptoed to the door, ^ind put her 

 ear down to the Iceyhole, and listened. 

 Presently she heard the sound of Mary's 

 voice. That relieved her. "She's talkin' 

 to herself," said Miss Betty. "I wonder 

 what she's savin' ?" 



She bent down and listened again. And 

 this is what she heard : 



"I'd love her if she'd let me. Dear God, 

 I don't want her to hate me. Won't you 

 make her love me?" 



Miss Betty did not care to listen longer. 



She felt a kind of strange, guilty fear 

 creeping over her, as she heard the little 

 girl's plea. Was God in there with her? 



She opened the cellar door with a jerk. 

 '^^You c'n come out, ef you want to," she 



said, and then she turned abruptly away, 

 for she did not feel like facing the child. 

 She was not superstitious, but the thought 

 that God was the child's friend — that 

 he seemed to be near her and with her — 

 gave her a most uncomfortable feeling. 

 If God was with the child, then he must 

 be near her also, and she did not care to 

 think it so. She had shut him out of her 

 life so long that she had almost forgotten 

 his existence. Mary's coming had brought 

 him back into it, in a way, and she felt 

 much as a man does who has been doing 

 wrong in the cover of darkness, when an- 

 other comes along with a light, and he 

 and his wrong-doings are discovered. 



She avoided Mary all the rest of the 

 day, and the child was satisfied to have 

 it so, because it enabled her to escape the 

 harsh words and unkind looks which had 

 become a part of her new life. 



(To he continued.) 



The "Garden Cities" of England 



AN OLD-WORLD PLAN FOR GETTING BACK TO NATURE 

 ®y RALPH NEVILLE, M.A., K.C. 



Chairman Garden City Association Council. 



IN England the problems recognized by 

 social reformers as most urgently de- 

 manding attention are two in number, 

 which are closely interdependent— the 

 overcrowding of towns, and the depopula- 

 tion of the country. These evils are more 

 acutely felt in England than elsewhere, 

 because, so far as industrial development 

 is concerned, England is in a much later 

 stage of development than the rest of 

 the world. She is so because of the early 

 start she had- in manufacturing industries, 

 and also because of the limited area of her 

 island domain. 



There have been endless discussions of 

 the subject. A variety of means of check- 

 ing the evil have been suggested, but to 

 my mind without hope of success, for they 



one and all depend upon the diversion of 

 labor from manufacture to agriculture, 

 the reversal in fact of natural economic 

 law. 



I should shock rather than inform my 

 readers by dilating on the horrors result- 

 ing from overcrowding. Mr. Charles 

 Booth, in his monumental work on Lon- 

 don, and Mr. Eowntree, in his recent book 

 on York, give the statistics with regard 

 to two cities, containing a population re- 

 spectively of 5,000,000 and 70,000. Suf- 

 fice it to say, it is universally admitted 

 that the existing state of things is intol- 

 erable, and seriously threatens the vigor 

 of the race in the old country. 



Any great improvement in existing 

 towns is practically impossible — -first, be- 



