You must not think, however, that we spent the whole of our time at Marshlands with the boys. They were frequently out with their father upon some shooting or fishing expedition, and Cathy and I would potter about the garden or in the fields with "the mater", only too delighted to have the chance of getting her quite to ourselves. A sweeter or truer gentlewoman than dear Mrs. Winstanley it has never been my good fortune to meet. She took me to her kind heart at once, and gave me for the first time in my life that "mothering" which I had so sadly lacked. I have hinted that my aunt did not make too much of me; even her own children did not run to her with their joys and sorrows, and I had never been accustomed to think of her as in any sense a possible companion. Mrs. Winstanley, on the other hand, was the most delightful of comrades. She had not forgotten in the very least what it felt like to be young; she could sympathize in all our amusements, indeed I think she enjoyed a picnic tea in the woods, or a scramble for blackberries, fully as much as we did ourselves; but she contrived at the same time to make us interested in those intellectual pleasures which were the great resource of her life. Under her guiding hand I made my first efforts at sketching; she taught me the names of the trees and the flowers, of which before I was lamentably ignorant; and a walk to see a cromlech or a stone circle upon the moors was an opportunity for such delightful stories about the early dwellers in our lands, that I became a lover of "antiquities" on the spot. I feel I can never be grateful enough to her for giving me in my childhood that taste for natural history which has been such a joy to me in my after-life. She taught us to use our eyes, and to see the beauty in each leaf and flower and every common thing around us. At her suggestion Cathy and I each began a "Nature Note-Book", in which we recorded all the plants, birds, animals, or insects we met with during our rambles, drawing and painting as many of them as we could. "It will form a kind of naturalists' calendar," she said. "You must put the dates to all your finds, and in years to come the books will prove very interesting. Never mind whether the sketches are good or bad. Persevere, and you will soon begin to improve, and the very effort to copy a flower or a butterfly will impress its shape and colour upon your minds in a way which nothing else could do." We waxed very enthusiastic over these note-books, and there was quite a keen competition between us as to which should contain the most records. As we kept them for several years, we naturally had different entries during the holidays we spent apart; and while I was able to sketch gorgeous sea-anemones and madrepores which I found upon the shores of south-country watering-places, Cathy would exult over the coral cups or birds'-nest fungi for which she searched the woods in winter.