"This is charming!" said she. "How I shall enjoy putting the garden in order! There is every thing here, and nothing is needed but to reduce it to some kind of system."
"You will hardly care to do much to a rented place," remarked the next door neighbour, who had charge of the keys. "One cannot take much interest in a garden which one expects soon to leave."
"As to that, we are all tenants at will," said John. "If the place were my own, I should have no assurance of keeping it a single week."
"True," said Letty, thoughtfully; "and yet one does feel differently about a place of one's own. It is pleasant to think that we can leave the work of our hands to our children."
"And how many people in this country do so?" asked John. "Our improvements will go to somebody's children, if not to our own; and, meanwhile, we have the pleasure of seeing them."
The house was taken; and Letty, rejoiced to find herself once more with a house and garden of her own, set herself to work in earnest to remedy, by all sorts of contrivances, the deficiencies of the furniture, and to weed and put in order the neglected flower-beds. The place soon assumed a pleasant, cheerful aspect; and here Letty's third child was born,—a fine, stout boy.
It was when the new-comer was two or three months old that John one day brought in a paper directed in Gatty's handwriting.
"There must be something special in it," said Letty. "Look and see if there is any place marked."
John looked, and uttered an exclamation of horror as the paragraph met his eye. Letty read over his shoulder:—
"FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT AND LOSS OF LIFE.—We are grieved to announce the death of the infant son of our well-known townsman, Mr. Joseph Emerson. It appears that Mr. and Mrs. Emerson had been out late at a party, and on coming home went, as usual, to the nursery to see their boy. They were horror-struck at seeing the room full of smoke, and, rushing to the crib, found their little one almost reduced to a cinder. Terribly injured as he was, the child survived several hours. There was a small open fire in the room; and it is supposed that during the momentary absence of the nurse a spark must have fallen into the crib."