One morning, the woman who has taken Martha's place, and who finds much apparent delight in the binding and twisting of my hair into impossible fashions, takes courage` to address me. "The gardens here, ma'am, are so pretty, the prettiest for miles round." "Are they? I must go and see them." "'Deed, m'm, and it would do you good. A smart walk now once in a way is better'n medicine, so I'm told. And the grounds round here is rare and pretty to look at, though to be sure winter has a dispiritin' effect on everything." "It is cold," I say, with a shiver. "It is, m'm surely"--leaving the mighty edifice she is erecting on the top of my head to give the fire a vigorous poke--"but with your fur cloak and hat you won't feel it. Shall I bring them to you after breakfast, ma'am?" "Very well; do," reply I, with a sigh of resignation. Much pleased with her success, the damsel retreats, and punctually to the moment, as I rise from my breakfast-table, appears again, armed with cloak and gloves and hat. Thus constrained, I sally forth, and make a tour round the gardens that surround what must be for evermore my home. And very delicious old gardens they are, as old-fashioned as the house, and quite as picturesque. There is a total want of method, of precision, in the arrangement of them, that instinctively charms the eyes. I wander from orchard into flower-garden, and from flower-garden on again to orchard, without a break of any sort--no gates divide them: it is all one pretty happy medley. The walks, though scrupulously neat, are ungravelled, and here and there a dead leaf, crisp and dry, displays itself. The very trees, though bereft of leaves, do not appear so foolish, so melancholy, in this free land of theirs, as they always look elsewhere. I feel some animation creeping in my blood; my step is more springy. At the garden gate the father of all this sweetness steps up to me. He is a rosy-checked, good-humored-looking man, a brilliant contrast to the unapproachable Cummins; he presents me with a small bouquet of winter flowers. "I am proud to see you ma'am," he says, with a touch of interest in his tone. "I am sorry I have nothing better worth offering you than these 'ere." He tenders the bouquet as he speaks--a very marvel of a bouquet, considering the time of year. "Thank you," I say, with a gracious smile, born of my brisk and pleasant promenade: "it is lovely. It is far prettier in my eyes than the summer one, because so unexpected." "I pass on, leaving him, bowing and scraping and much gratified, in the middle of the path, with the unwonted smile still upon my lips." But, as the evening draws on, this faintest, glimmer of renewed hope dies, and I sink back once more into my accustomed gloom. --- "What will you please to order for dinner to-day, mum?" asks cook from the doorway. I have never yet given directions for that meal, much to that worthy creatures despair, whose heart and thoughts are in her stew-pans.