The yard merged into a meadow, studded over with chestnut-trees and oaks, through which a little stream, crystal-clear, bubbled and sang its way over the rounded pebbles on its bed. Violets grew there in the spring, and irises, pale primroses and blue forget-me-nots, and all the year round hens, speckled, and buff, and white, were dotted here and there on the grass, walking at will about the coops, languidly searching for grubs. Sweet-faced ducks waddied in solemn procession from the yard to the stream and stayed there, half in, half out of the water. Beyond the stream the wood began, straggling at first, then dense —with Kentish undergrowth, and alive with scuttling, bobtailed rabbits.

The orchard, born at a distance from the house, to the east, had wandered through many years nearer and nearer to the house, and spread stray apple-trees and plum all amongst the flowers in the garden. So that in the spring white blossoms and palest pink fluttered down like snow upon the daffodils and lay, flecks of foam, upon the close-cut turf.

In September, when Elizabeth first saw it, the garden was rich and warm beneath the changing tints, and the house basked golden in the autumn sun. Very slowly were the leaves turning, so that here and there, peeping from out the softer green, splashes of red and orange showed, heralds of the year’s decline. The late roses were wide-spread, trembling before their approaching end, and all about them the Canterbury bells nodded to each other, and the lavender waved, thick and fragrant on either side the flagged walks. Beyond were masses of phlox, purple and white, and palest pink. Blue bordering flowers stretched at their feet, and a few tall lilies stood about them, pure white with golden hearts. Asters flaunted every colour on a neighbouring bed, and beside the old wall of mellow red, the sweet-peas rambled, casting their scent about them.

A hedge of yew with an arch clipped in the centre shut the sunk rock-garden from view. You walked down the flagged path, over the tiny flowers that pushed their way up between the cracks, and stood beneath the arch, at the top of the moss-grown steps that wound their rustic way down through the terraced rockery to the pond below. There gold-fish dwelt, and frogs, beneath a fountain playing rainbow-coloured in the sun, and there a mournful willow bowed its head until its whispering leaves dipped listless to the water’s edge.

Elizabeth cried out when first she saw Queen’s Halt, thinking it the most beautiful home on earth. Everything in it, all its quaint, old furniture, every plant in the garden she thought delightful, only Nana, tall and prim, made her shy and ill-at-ease. She had expected the old nurse of fiction, buxom and smiling, domineering perhaps, but kind. She found a thin woman with an impassive countenance, w T ho treated her with quiet respect, and with ceremony handed over the keys.