We have mentioned what was not to be found at Summerford. What the two sisters did find there was amply sufficient for enjoyment. There was a long avenue winding up to the house, so beset with ancient trees, that it seemed a passage through the heart of a wood. The lawn on which it opened was dotted with islands and rings of flower-bed,—perfect magic circles of horticulture, one all blue, another red, another yellow. There was the house itself, with its old-fashioned terraces, urns, and balustrades, and behind it—oh, joy—a rookery! A conservatory shot out its transparent glittering wing on one side of the edifice. At the foot of a slope of grass descending from the flower-palace lay a pool, shut in by a mound and by fragments of rock overgrown with flowers, and arched above by trees. On the surface spread the level leaves of the water-lilies, with the sparkling bubbles here and there upon their edges, and everywhere the shadowed water was alive with fish, that might be seen darting, like little ruddy flames, in and out among the arrowy sheaves of reeds. Then farther away there were old irregular walks, richly furred with moss, wandering under trees through which the sunbeams shot, now making some glossy evergreen far in among the stems and underwood shine with a startling brightness (so that the passer-by turned to see if there were not running water there, and fancied Undine had been at her tricks again),—now rendering translucent some plume of fern, now kindling some rugged edge of fir, and again glistening on some old tree-trunk, mailed with its circular plates of white lichen. These wood pathways—often broken into natural steps by the roots of the trees which ran across their course—led up a steep hill. From the summit were seen, in front, opposite heights, thickly covered with foliage, through which it was only here and there that a jutting point of rock could show itself to be reddened by the setting sun. Beneath, at a great depth, a shallow brook idled on its pebbles, and you looked down on the heads of those who crossed its rustic bridge. On the one hand, there stretched away to the horizon a gentle sweep of hills, crossed and re-crossed with hedgerows and speckled with trees and sheep, and, on the other, lay the sea, in the haze of a sultry day, seen like a grey tablet of marble veined with cloud-shadows. All this without doors, and books, pictures, prints, drawing, chess, chat, so choice and plentiful within, made Summerford ‘a dainty place’— Attempred goodly well for health and for delight.