“No, I haven’t,” said the old lady calmly. “I know better than that. At any rate, you don’t know that I have,” she added with a brisk change of manner; “for, if I have, I keep it so close shut up that I quite forget it, and it is in danger of being starved, like naughty children’s pet canaries. But it gives a little chirp sometimes. I am sorry for Rachel, and that’s why I like to fancy the man wouldn’t have turned out well, and that’s why I’ve given her all my black silk dresses. The cook says he’s had ‘noble mournings, such as the likes of he couldn’t have expected.’ She says, too, that Rachel wears that ring tied round her neck. That’s rank idolatry! But I suppose they have some feelings like ours. When I’m gone people will find among my treasures queer cuttings out of newspapers and tags of old programmes that they’ll wonder over. And must you really be going, my dears? So soon? A cab waiting! Fie! Is that the way to treat an old friend? Give my love to your husband when you write to him,” she said, drawing down Lucy’s face and kissing it fondly, “and tell him we dine with the Lord Chief Justice on New Year’s Day—it’s in his own professional line, you know—and that he is to come home and follow in our footsteps, especially in Mr. Bray’s when he bought me that dress! And good-bye, little man! And there’s a nice, weeny, tiny coin to remember an old woman by. And you’re not to show it to mamma till you are out of this house. And good-bye, Florence”—with a little peck of a kiss. “And keep Jem up to the mark in sending pretty messages. Tell him about the china. No, no, you sha’n’t take it! Ladies didn’t carry parcels for gentlemen in my young days. Good-bye, all!” There was weary Rachel waiting in the hall. Lucy could not pass her without a word—it was a habit of hers never to pass a servant without some friendly recognition. Instinctively she said— “Thank you. I wish you a good New Year!” The worn face flashed into tenderness. And the door closed upon it so. (_To be continued._) OUR LILY GARDEN. PRACTICAL AIDS TO THE CULTURE OF LILIES. BY CHARLES PETERS. Although we have no true lily indigenous to our island, there is at least one species which has established itself in England, and by this time can claim to be called a British wild flower. This lily is the _Martagon_ or Turk’s cap, a flower long cultivated in English gardens, and, after the Madonna lily, the most familiar of the whole genus. The fifth group of lilies, the _Martagons_, is the most extensive of all. It includes over twenty species which differ widely from each other in most particulars. The usual description of the members of this group (“perianth cernuous, with the segments very revolute, stamens diverging on all sides”) is certainly applicable to all the _Martagons_, but it is equally so to the tiger-lily or _L. Speciosum_.