Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
spring alights. It is so lucky to have swallows’ nests; it is 
said no house can ever be burnt where swallows build. In 
Russia there is a similar belief, and it is further deemed 
very unlucky to kill swallows, since the swallows were said 
to have stolen away the nails that the Jews were going to 
use to fasten the Saviour to the cross, while the sparrows 
brought them back and are considered accursed in 
consequence. 
Within, our house is a nest of tiny low rooms, with 
wooden beds, chintz curtains, a best bedroom with an 
ancient fourposter which certainly never got in whole, 
treasures of old Spode china, corner cupboards, and 
mysterious “ hidieholes ” in the thickness of the old walls, 
bead-embroidered screens and tables, carved whatnots, old 
weapons, and ancient prints of dead and gone worthies, 
friends of those gone from here; such as Lord Lynedoch, 
the faithful lover and gallant Peninsular hero who would 
not be buried in Westminster Abbey among the great ones 
of the earth, but declared he would rather lie as Thomas 
Graham of Balgowan in the Scottish kirkyard of Methven 
by the side of his long-lost love and fair bride, whose 
picture still adorns the National Gallery in Edinburgh. 
There was a coloured print of this picture among the many 
relics of the past, and I fell in love at once with the sweet- 
faced bride in her feathered hat, and gave her a place of 
honour in our little sunny parlour — I cannot call it a 
drawing-room, it is too small and old-fashioned. One can 
quite imagine Mrs. Fairchild, Mrs. Howard or Mrs. Good- 
riche sitting in it. Indeed, I should not feel surprised, 
I think, if Miss Grizzy and Miss Jacky, so delightfully 
described by Miss Ferrier, were to walk in, for these old 
gentlewomen are not quite extinct yet; I know of an old 
Scots home or two where a *Muss Grizzy still makes her 
friends welcome with the old-time Scotch hospitality. The 
place is full of all the quaint lumber which gathers in an 
old secluded house which has been forgotten of its owners 
and let continuously for a long time in short periods. At 
last it has fallen to our lot. How well I remember the 
4 
