My Friends in their Gardens 
the Sparrows likewise broke the Gardener’s heart, and 
though she grieved she would not do away with either 
feathered villain. How I loved to walk with her beneath 
the avenue of old Linden-trees, where the Bees haunted, 
humming ; outpouring youthful troubles, and the sometime 
heart-weariness of a motherless creature, to be soothed by 
the tender grace and abundant sympathy of my Lady ! 
I think she bore about with her the crystal amulet which, 
according to the old story, compelled the love of every one 
who met with the wearer, who, dear sweet soul, went 
through a perilous world unscathed and all unconscious of 
the charm she bore. I remember the old mossy Bowling- 
green, with its fantastic Yews cut into bird and beast shape, 
where the blue-necked Peacocks used to trail their gorgeous 
fans or mount and preen themselves on the low stone 
balustrade of the terrace. My Lady would walk up and 
down the terrace and watch the old weathercock on the 
top of the tower with anxious eyes when the wind was 
rising : she had a boy at sea. 
The elder son was married, and lived quietly amid his 
Turnip-fields in the neighbourhood ; the younger, his 
mother’s darling, was a restless soul, and loved the life of a 
sailor. But every now and then he would return home, 
and then my Lady would walk so proudly with him in the 
old walk between the Holly-hedges (where they had walked 
together ever since the days when in the holidays he was 
wont to confide his schoolboy-pranks to his mammy), she 
leaning now on his arm, where formerly, so the old folk 
about remembered, the pretty young mother used to entice 
the scarcely running child to follow her along the path by 
deftly-thrown ball. And the Squirrels frisked away before 
them as they had done times without number, and the 
chuckling Blackbirds and bold Robins haunted the path and 
stopped on the close-cut hedge to look at them. My 
Lady loved them all, and they knew it. 
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