Derbyshire itself, with its wild lilies of the valley, its ferns and daffodils and laughing streams, is hardly more “taking” than the country through which winds the silver Trent, past Nottingham Castle, perched on its rock and promontory above the fields where the wild crocus in those days made sheets of vivid purple, and the steep banks of Clifton Grove, with its shoals of blue forget-me-not, making a dim, tree-crowned outline, with here and there a gleam of silver, as seen by the chariots “on the road.” Wollaton Park, with its great beeches and limes and glimpses of shy deer, would give gold and crimson and a thousand shades of russet to the picture. And farther south, at the other end of the journey, what miles of orchards and pine woods and sweet-scented heather—what rolling Downs and Surrey homesteads along the turnpike roads! Though Parthenope and Florence had no brothers to play with them, they seem to have had a great variety of active occupations, both at Lea Hurst and at Embley. Of course they had their dolls, like other little girls; but those which belonged to Florence had a way of falling into the doctor’s hands—an imaginary doctor, of course—and needing a good deal of tender care and attention. Florence seemed never tired of looking after their various ailments. In fact, she had at times a whole dolls’ hospital to tend. She probably picked up a little amateur knowledge of medicine quite early in life; for the poor people in the neighbourhood used to come to her mother for help in any little emergency, and Mrs. Nightingale was, like many another Lady Bountiful of her generation, equipped with a certain amount of traditional wisdom and kindly common sense, aided in her case by wider reading and a better educated mind than the ordinary.