Winter was drawing on, as Clementina poetically expressed it, “fast as a stone rolls down the hillside.” No Pacific Island letter had ever come from Mr. Challoner, but Lucy said to herself that possibly his American letter would but come the sooner. Every morning she woke with the thought “Charlie’s letter may come to-day!” She knew the hope was still premature. So when she did not find Charlie’s letter, she always opened her other letters cheerily and read aloud any items of news which she thought might amuse the little breakfast party, Hugh generally having an interest in most of his mother’s friends, since those who cared for her did not forget to send a message to him, and one or two even added a bit of paper “all for himself,” covered with “O’s” for kisses. One morning towards the end of November three letters lay by Lucy’s breakfast plate. The top one was a note from the picture dealer, the under one was but a type-written circular. But Lucy paused over the centre missive. “Here is a funny-looking epistle,” she said, holding it up. The envelope was thin and poor and dirty, and the writing seemed to have been done by a pin-like pen wielded by a very heavy hand, which must have wrought sore damage on its instrument before it laid it down. “I know what that is,” said Tom confidently; “it’s the bricklayer’s bill.” A few days earlier a bricklayer had been employed to relay a stone in the scullery floor, and Tom and Hugh had superintended the performance with great delight. “Well, I don’t think he makes out many bills,” remarked Lucy, rather daintily tearing open the filthy wrapper and unfolding its contents. As she did so, her contented smile changed to a look of bewilderment. (_To be continued._) ABOUT PERGOLAS, AND MISS JEKYLL’S “WOOD AND GARDEN.” Miss Gertrude Jekyll’s _Wood and Garden: Notes and Thoughts Practical and Critical by a Working Amateur_ (Longmans) would be welcome if it were only for the convincing way in which she preaches the true gospel of gardening—that there is no hard and fast line between wood and garden, wild and cultivated. She makes her garden melt into her strip of woodland; she plants her wood as well as her garden with flowers. The twelve calendar chapters with which her book opens detail the operations month by month of nature as well as of the gardener. These are followed by chapters on large and small gardens; beginning and learning; the flower-border and the pergola; the primrose garden; the colours of flowers; the scents of the garden; the worship of false gods; novelty and variety; weeds and pests; the bedding fashion and its influence; and masters and men—all of them delightfully illustrated from photographs taken by the author.