“‘Pooh, gardeners!’ she said. ‘That wouldn’t be any fun. Besides, teeth don’t grow into gardeners anyway, they grow into soldiers’; and she comes out every morning and evening to water it.” * * * * * Rose’s want of interest in work of any kind extended to games. Her boredom when her father and I were at croquet or billiards was abysmal, and I could never induce her to persevere with a mallet. Her playground was the world, and her play was to be in it, and see it, and, I doubt not, speculate as to its peculiarities. She liked to have stories read to her, but she liked better to invent them for herself and relate them to herself as she walked about, outdoors or in. But when she could get one’s whole attention, which is the too-often-frustrated desire of most children, she was happiest. A walk with me in the garden when I was “ab-so-loot-ly” idle, without scissors or spud or preoccupation, was one of her special treats; the tendency of grown up people to let their eyes wander towards weeds or suckers or green fly being among her heavy crosses. But her crosses were few. She must have been one of the first children for whom those in authority made the world primarily a happy place. It is more or less the rule now, but it was exceptional then. Like most little girls, she was interested in young creatures: more than interested, enchanted by them. The finest horse in the world—Iroquois, say, who had just won the Derby—the finest cow, the finest sheep, left her calm; but she trembled with rapture on catching sight of a foal or a calf or a lamb. If the lamb had a black face she screamed with joy. As for puppies and kittens, she lost her head completely over them. Again and again I have had to stop, when she has been on my rounds with me, while she got down in order to embrace one of these impostors, and the uglier the kitten was the more she loved it. I could never break her of the habit—an extremely insanitary one, I am convinced—of hugging stray kittens. It was odd that an ugly one should appeal to her more than a perfect one; but odder that any injured creature had such an immediate claim on her sympathy. Many children are afraid of animals that are maimed and in pain: or at any rate they avoid them. But Rose collected them. Birds with broken wings, mangy puppies, kittens that had been scalded or lamed—her infirmary always contained one or more specimens of these, and we all had to help in nursing them back to vigour. Such was Rose in those early days when we were still neighbours. And then came one of the crises in the life of both of us. * * * * *