“You do not know what the Irish are,” she exclaimed; “so kind, so hearty, so genial. With them a governess is received as one of the family. The children love her, and cling to her as if she were an elder sister. And the Fitzpatricks are of the _vieille roche_, you know; you will find no parvenu gentility there.” Yes, the picture was a fair one; but, for lack of one feature, it seemed cold and dreary to Lucy Alford. She managed, however, to appear contented, and thanked Mrs. Jerningham prettily for the kindness which had procured her this distant home. After this, Emily went out alone to her garden and hot-houses, to inspect the latest ugliness in calceolarias; and Mrs. Colton held her morning conference with the housekeeper, and received a solemn embassy from the kitchen-garden and forcing-houses. Lucy sat listlessly in the drawing-room, meditating upon the new estate of life to which it had pleased Mrs. Jerningham, under Providence, to call her; while Mrs. Jerningham went to see the new calceolaria, and to reflect at ease upon her late interview with Lucy. “There isn’t one of ’em out as deep a colour as this here, mum,” said the gardener; “and if I can get the slips to strike--as I believe I shall--we shall have a rare show of ’em.” “Poor little thing, how she loves him!” thought Mrs. Jerningham. “But in a new country, among new faces, she will soon forget all that.” “They strikes a deep root, you see, mum, when they do strike--these young plants. They send their suckers down into the earth, and you’d find it hard work to uproot ’em.” “A girl of that age is always falling in love,” continued Mrs. Jerningham. “It’s a mere overflow of juvenile sentimentality, and never lasts very long.” And then, having stared at the flowers in the hothouse with absent, unseeing eyes, she would fain have departed; but the gardener stopped her with a request for permission to order more manure. “We shall want a few loads more, mum,” he said, in his most insinuating tone; “I don’t like to be allus askin’--which I know it _do_ look like that--but I know as you wish a show made with these here calceolaries; and these young plants require a deal o’ manure. And then there’s the melons, mum; there ain’t a plant going like melons for sucking the goodness out of manure--they’re a regular greedy lot, melons--as you may say, mum; and there ain’t no satisfyin’ ’em. But, you see, I turns it all into the ground afterwards, mum, and you gets the good out of it next year, in your sea-kale.”