There she is now, busy in her tiny garden, with the birds twittering about her, and the yellow leaves falling; and her thick gauntlets on her slender hands. How fresh and pretty she looks in that sad, sylvan solitude, with the background of the dull crimson brick and the climbing roses. Bars of sunshine fall through the branches above, across the thick tapestry of blue, yellow, and crimson, that glow so richly upon their deep green ground. There is not much to be done just now, I fancy, in the gardening way; but work is found or invented--for sometimes the hour is dull, and that bright, spirited, and at heart, it may be, bitter exile, will make out life somehow. There is music, and drawing. There are flowers, as we see, and two or three correspondents, and walks into the village; and her dark cousin, Dorcas, drives down sometimes in the pony-carriage, and is not always silent; and indeed, they are a good deal together. This young lady's little Eden, though overshadowed and encompassed with the solemn sylvan cloister of nature's building, and vocal with sounds of innocence--the songs of birds, and sometimes those of its young mistress--was no more proof than the Mesopotamian haunt of our first parents against the intrusion of darker spirits. So, as she worked, she lifted up her eyes, and beheld a rather handsome young man standing at the little wicket of her garden, with his gloved hand on the latch. A man of fashion--a town man--his dress bespoke him: smooth cheeks, light brown curling moustache, and eyes very peculiar both in shape and colour, and something of elegance of finish in his other features, and of general grace in the _coup d'oeil_, struck one at a glance. He was smiling silently and slily on Rachel, who, with a little cry of surprise, said-- 'Oh, Stanley! is it you?' And before he could answer, she had thrown her arms about his neck and kissed him two or three times. Laughingly, half-resisting, the young man waited till her enthusiastic salutation was over, and with one gloved hand caressingly on her shoulder, and with the other smoothing his ruffled moustache, he laughed a little more, a quiet low laugh. He was not addicted to stormy greetings, and patted his sister's shoulder gently, his arm a little extended, like a man who tranquillises a frolicsome pony. 'Yes, Radie, you see I've found you out;' and his eye wandered, still smiling oddly, over the front of her quaint habitation. 'And how have you been, Radie?' 'Oh, very well. No life like a gardener's--early hours, work, air, and plenty of quiet.' And the young lady laughed. 'You are a wonderful lass, Radie.' 'Thank you, dear.' 'And what do you call this place?' '"The Happy Valley," _I_ call it. Don't you remember "Rasselas?"' 'No,' he said, looking round him; 'I don't think I was ever there.' 'You horrid dunce!--it's a book, but a stupid one--so no matter,' laughed Miss Rachel, giving him a little slap on the shoulder with her slender fingers.