“Do tell me, Leila, how you manage so well,” she said one morning, as she stood admiring a couple of fine screens which Leila had just finished for Mrs. Herbert. “Those different coloured geraniums seem to me to look brighter even than when they were in the conservatory; and how gracefully the stalks are bent, and the flowers hanging down so nicely, just as if they were still growing; and those leaves and ferns are of such a beautiful green, and look so well mixed with the bright colour of the flowers. My green leaves always turn a dull yellow, or brown, or something abominable; and as to the blue convolvulus, that provokes me more than any thing. Look at yours, they are as bright as when they grew in the garden, and when I try to dry them, the colour goes away altogether, and they get to be a dirty white. I cannot get any thing to do well but yellow buttercups, and that is such a common flower. All this provokes me so, I have no patience for it. No one will ever give me a sovereign for the poor,[B] for a couple of screens, as they did to you, and I wish so much that they would.” [B] A fact. “But you know,” Leila answered, “that was only because it was a sale of ladies’ work for the poor. My screens were not worth that.” “I don’t know; they were most beautiful, and I heard every one saying so, for I stood near the counter where they were that I might hear them praised; and when that gentleman with the nice face took them up and the lady told them they were done by a little girl, he said that little girl deserved to be encouraged, and he paid down the sovereign in a minute. Oh! I was so glad; but though I cannot earn a sovereign, I might earn something if you would only tell me what I must do to dry them as you do.” “Yes, I will tell you every thing I can; but I think the great matter is being very patient.” “But, Cousin Leila, I am sure you are not very patient.” “Yes, I know that; papa often says I am too impetuous.” “Well,” Matilda observed, “and does not that just mean that you have no patience?” Leila coloured. “I suppose it does,” she said; “but in some things I have patience, I am always very patient about flowers; to be sure, that is not wonderful, for in the island they were like friends to me. I used to visit them two or three times in the day to see how they were getting on, and to talk to them, as if they were alive, and I often knew the hour of the day by their opening and shutting.” “And do any of the flowers here open and shut at certain hours?” Matilda inquired.