“From your loving sister, “FLO BRAND. “P.S.—I suppose you are always getting the best of good news from the other side of the sea?” That palpable “afterthought” nearly made Lucy flatly decline the appeal. Yet she hesitated. This was only “Florence’s way,” and she might have done just the same had the original motive of her letter been inquiry after her brother-in-law and not a mere invitation to her sister. Lucy wanted to cherish family affection, so far as it was possible; and then she could well believe that Jem “could be nasty.” Poor Flo! So she got as far as to mention her invitation to her little household at tea-time. “Of course you’ll go,” said Miss Latimer. “It will do you a world of good.” “Hugh and I will get on grandly while you are away,” said Tom. “We’ve got a plan laid out already for some evening ‘when mamma is busy,’ but now it shall be when ‘mamma is gone to a party.’” “I can’t go very early,” observed Lucy, hesitating, “for I sha’n’t leave home before you come from the office.” “It’s a slack time, and I’ll get away sharp,” returned Tom, while Hugh’s face, which had clouded, cleared, and he danced to and fro between his mother and his friend. So Lucy wrote to Florence, and told her she might expect to see her between five and six next evening. (_To be continued._) OUR LILY GARDEN. PRACTICAL AIDS TO THE CULTURE OF LILIES. BY CHARLES PETERS. A visit to the royal gardens at Kew is always a pleasant holiday. There is so much to see and admire, and so very much of what is quite new and unexpected, that all lovers of flowers must look both forward to and backwards at their visits to England’s greatest garden. We remember strolling into the gardens on a June day last year. The weather was fine and warm, and the gardens were at their very best. We had been into the various greenhouses; had duly admired the airy lightness of the filmy ferns; had marvelled at the stalky palm or the ridiculous cactus (one of the latter we can never forget, for it bore a great pink blossom on what might have been mistaken for a savage’s club!) We had seen the great leaves of the Victoria lily, with its huge flower-bud not yet open; we had viewed with interest the curious sacred bean, and had been half-stifled in the dense atmosphere of the tropical orchid house. But it was not among the rare productions of the tropics; it was not in the greenhouse in which the choicest of flowers are exhibited in tasteful combination; it was not among the curious and beautiful orchids that the finest flower of June was to be seen. No! The finest plant which flowered in Kew in that June was to be found in an open bed behind the great palm-house. On turning towards the rosery when leaving the tropical palm-house, our attention was arrested by a sheet of dazzling gold. We approached the spot and found that the object which had brought us thither was a bed of the great Caucasian lily or _Lilium Monodelphum_.