"Ah! we can do nothing like that in this country," said Fleda, shaking her head; "our winters are unmanageable."
She was silent a minute, turning over the leaves of her book in an abstracted manner.
"You have struck out upon a grave path of reflection," said Mr. Carleton, gently, "and left me bewildered among the roses."
"I was thinking," said Fleda, looking up and laughing, "I was moralizing to myself upon the curious equalization of happiness in the world; I just sheered off from a feeling of envy, and comfortably reflected that one measures happiness by what one knows not by what one does not know; and so, that in all probability I have had near as much enjoyment in the little number of plants that I have brought up and cherished, and know intimately, as you, Sir, in your superb walk through fairy-land."
"Do you suppose," said he, laughing, "that I leave the whole care of fairy-land to my gardener? No, you are mistaken; when the roses are to act as my correctors, I find I must become theirs. I seldom go among them without a pruning knife, and never without wishing for one. And you are certainly right so far that the plants on which I bestow most pains give me the most pleasure. There are some that no hand but mine ever touches, and those are by far the best loved of my eye."
A discussion followed partly natural, partly moral on the manner of pruning various roses, and on the curious connection between care and complacency, and the philosophy of the same.
"The rules of the library are to shut up at sundown, Sir," said one the bookmen, who had come into the room.
"Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda, jumping up; "is my uncle not here,
Mr. Frost?"
"He has been gone half an hour, Ma'am."
"And I was to have gone home with him; I have forgotten myself."