Some blankets to send to the poor. My list of flower seeds. And then Bess and I were to go sledging in the lanes. To English people sledging never seems a quite real amusement, and always to belong a little to the region of a fairy-story. Punctual to the moment, Burbidge appeared with long sheets of foolscap, and we made out the list of seeds. "Burbidge," I said grandly, as he handed to me the sheets of paper, "I leave the vegetables to you, save just my foreign pets." Burbidge bowed graciously and we were about to begin, when he could not resist his usual speech about disliking foreign men, foreign flowers, and foreign seeds. "Yes," I rejoined slyly; "but you must remember how many people liked the Mont D'Or beans and praised your Berlin lettuces." "Well, so long as you and the squire were pleased, I know my duty," replied Burbidge, mollified. "Which is?" I could not refrain from asking, for the old man has always his old-fashioned formula at the tip of his tongue. "Which is," repeated old Burbidge, rehearsing his old-fashioned catechism solemnly, "watering in droughts, weeding all weathers, and keeping a garden throughout peart and bobbish as if it war the Lord's parlour." "It is a very good duty," I said. "Yes," answered Burbidge, complacently; "new fangled scholards haven't got far beyond that, not even when they puts Latin names to the job. They have County Councils now, and new tricks of all sorts, but 'tis a pity as so many get up so early to misinform themselves, but there be some as allus will live underground and call it light, and there be none so ignorant as they as only reads books. They be born bats for all the garnish of their words." After which there followed a long pause--then Burbidge handed me his list of vegetables. "I haven't forgotten the foreigneerers," he said indulgently, "carrots, potatoes, peas, onions, celery, and greens, sprouts, and curls--enough even for a kitchen man, and the Lord Almighty would have a job to know what a Froggy cannot chop up or slip into a sauce. One might stock a county with extras, if one listened to they." [Sidenote: LOVE IN THE MIST] Then we turned to the flower list. Burbidge pointed with a big brown finger to my entry of "Love in the Mist," as I wrote, for I proposed having great patches of it in front of my lines of Madonna lilies, varied by patches of carnations, stocks, and zinnias in turns. "I don't hold," he said severely, "to so much bluery greenery before my lilies. There won't be no colour in my borders." Then when I protested, he added, "You like it, mam, 'cause it has a pretty name. There's a deal in a name, but 'tisn't all that call it 'Love in the Mist.' 'Devil in the Bush' was what my mother used to call it, and other folks 'Laddie in a Hole.' But there's a deal too much talked about such nonsense. Leave the maids alone, and eat your vittals, is what I tell my boys, and then there'd be a lot of cakey nonsense left out of the world."