At last she pushed her plate away, and Holdsworth rang the bell, and giving Mrs. Parrot private instructions to make up a parcel of the remainder of the cakes, etc., ready for Nelly to take home with her, he clasped the child’s hand and went with her into the garden, she holding the new doll, he dragging the horse and cart after him. There was a square of grass in this garden, and a bench on it; and here Holdsworth sat, while Nelly played with her toys. It was a roomy, old-fashioned garden, with aged walls, full of rusty nails and rotten ligatures, and a few tall pear-trees sheltering a small circumference of ground at their feet; and many fruit-trees sprawling wildly against the walls. The moss was like a carpet on the flint walk, and the box at the side of the bed was high and thick; and at the top of the garden was an old hencoop, hedged about with wirework, behind which some dozen hens scratched the soil for worms, and made the air drowsy with their odd, half-suppressed mutterings. Moods possess us, sometimes, which such a scene as this will affect more pleasurably than a garden bursting with exotics, and tended with the highest artistic judgment. There is something very calming in homely shrubs, and old fruit-trees with their roots hidden by the long, vivid grass, and uncouth weeds thrusting their rude shapes among violet beds; and the solemn chatter of barn-door hens sunning themselves in hot spaces, or lying like dead things with a wing half-buried in sand and dirt, will sometimes impart a more agreeable tranquillity to the mind than the choicest songs of nightingales warbled in groves under a full moon. Holdsworth suffered the child to have her full sportive will for some time, and then, thinking her tired, called her to him. She ran to him at once, and he perched her on his knee. “Is Nelly afraid of me now?” “No. Nelly dot afraid. Nelly loves ’oo.” In proof whereof she put her mouth up for a kiss. “Will Nelly come to see me every day?” “Det.” “Does Nelly’s papa love her?” He believed that she had been taught to regard Mr. Conway as her papa. It was a sore tax upon the gentle mood then on him to put the question in that form, but he wished to learn if his child were well treated by her step-father. The question puzzled her. Indeed, she was a very little thing, and backward in her speech. It was delicious to see her knit her tiny brows, and gaze with her full, deep, earnest eyes on Holdsworth, with a half-intelligence in her face, and all the rest child-sweetness. Like all children, who cannot answer a question, she remained silent; a hint parents would sometimes do well to take. “Does Nelly get plenty to eat?” “Det.” This was not quite true; but then Holdsworth, who knew nothing of children, was ignorant that little infants will borrow their answers from your voice or face, so that to get an affirmative from them you have only to speak or look affirmatively. “Does mamma teach Nelly to pray?” “Det. Nelly pray.”