For my own part I was very ignorant of the names and properties of English flowers. I knew some by sight, from Adelaide St. Quentin's bouquets, and from my great-grandfather's sketches; and I knew the names of others of which Adolphe had given me plants, and of which I was glad to see the flower. As I had plenty of pocket-money I was a liberal customer, and I made old Bridget tell me the names of the flowers in her bunches. I have since found out that whenever she was at fault she composed a name upon the spot, with the ready wit and desire to please characteristic of her nation. These names were chiefly connected with the Blessed Virgin and the saints. "The Lord blesh ye, my dear," she would say; "that's 'Mary's flower';" or, "Sure it's the 'Blessed Virgin's spinning-wheel,' and a pretty name too!" A bitter-smelling herb which she commended to me as "Saints' Savory," I afterwards learned to be tansy. The youngest of us, a small, silent little orphan, had bought no posy till one day she quietly observed, "If you could get me a peony, I would buy it." The peony was procured; so large, so round, and so red, that some one unfeelingly suggested that it should be cut up for pickled cabbage. The little miss walked home with it in her hand, looking at it as sentimentally as if it had been a forget-me-not. As we had been hard-hearted enough to laugh at it, we never learned the history which made it dear. Madame would certainly never have allowed us to break our ranks, and chaffer with Bridget, but that some one had been lucky enough to think of giving her bouquets. Madame liked flowers--as ornaments--and was sentimental herself, after a fashion, a sentimentality of appearances. She liked a bright spot of colour on her sombre dresses too, and she was economical; for every day that she had a bright bouquet a day's wear and tear was saved to her neck-ribbons. She pinned the bright flowers by her very clean collar, and not very clean throat, and permitted us to supply ourselves also from Bridget's basket. A less pleasant sign of summer than the lilac-blossom or Bridget's flower-basket was the heat. It was hot in the dusty, draughty streets of the little town. The empty bedrooms at Bush House were like ovens, and the well-filled school-room was much worse. Madame would never hear any complaints of the heat from me or from Matilda. Summer at Bush House, in the nature of things, could be nothing to summer in India, to which we were accustomed. It was useless to point out that in India the rooms in which we lived were large, well shaded, and ventilated by constant currents of fresh air. Also that there, our heaviest meal, our longest walk, and our hardest work were not all crowded into the hottest hours of the day. "England is at no time so warm as India," said Madame.