We have entered upon the period of our great glory and content; it is second summer in these hills, with just a crisp hint of autumn coming. There is nothing left of the rains but their benediction; all day long the sun draws the scent out of the deodars and makes false promises to the garden, where they believe it is spring. The field-daisies and the hollyhocks and the mignonette are all in second bloom and the broom down the khud has kindled up again. The person who is really puzzled is the lilac. We have a lilac bush. I assure you it is not everybody who can say so in the town of Simla; the lilac is most capricious about where she will stay and where she won’t stay. We have only one; all her children either die young or grow up dwarfs. However, after blooming in the most delicious and heartbreaking manner in April, fainting through June and going quite distracted in the rains, the lilac now finds new sap in her veins and the temptation assails her to flower regardless of the calendar. Yet she doesn’t, poor dear, quite know how; something is lacking to the consummation of April, and the fictitious joy she grasps at comes out in ragged little bunches that stick straight up at the end of the wood of the topmost branches. Nevertheless it is pure lilac, enough for a button-hole, and matter to boast of, lilac in October. For all these reasons I was perfectly happy this morning until twenty minutes past ten o’clock. Atma and I had been transplanting some cactus dahlias to fill up an empty place. It is a liberty I wouldn’t have taken at this time of year, but Atma says that he can deceive the dahlias. “By giving much water,” he explains, “they will take no notice,” and he has been craftily setting them down in little ponds. I had a dispute with him about a plant, which he declared was a lily. To settle the matter, as soon as my back was turned, he dug it up, and triumphantly sought me. “Behold,” said he, “it has an onion.” He was distressed to contradict me, but behold it _had_ an onion. The connection between an onion and a lily was simpler perhaps to Atma than it would be to many people; but I conceded it. Then came a pedlar of apples from a neighbouring garden. We shall have apples of our own in time, but our neighbour down the khud thought of it three or four years before we did, and there is no particular reason to wait. Our neighbour’s sturdy retailer squatted discouraged on his haunches before me. His brown muscles stood out in cords on his arms and legs, his face was anxious and simple like a child’s. “If your honour will listen,” said he, “half over Simla I have carried this burden of apples, and it is no lighter. My words are good and I go always to the verandah, but the sahib-folk will not buy.” “And is that,” said I, eyeing the fruit, “a strange thing, worthy one?”