"Rather the mind, Cary," said my father. "Let the mind be educated to bring its faculty and taste into full play, and it will train its own spies fast enough."
"It was that I meant, papa,—that cultivation of taste;—I was thinking, before you spoke what a blessing it is."
"Why, yes," said my father; "with that piece to bring down game, one is in less danger of mental starvation. But hush; here comes somebody that won't understand you."
And as he spoke, I saw the trim little figure of Mrs. Roberts, one of our neighbours, come in sight round a turn in the shrubbery.
"What a lovely evening, Mrs. Roberts," said I, as we met.
"Delicious!—such charming weather for the grass and the dairy, and everything. It was so fine, I told Mr. Roberts I would just run down and see your mamma for a minute; I wanted to ask her a question. I shall find her at home, shan't I?"
I satisfied Mrs. Roberts on that point, and my father and I turned to walk back to the house with her, thinking that our pleasure was over.
"The roses are in great beauty now," I remarked.
"Beautiful!—and what an immense quantity of them you have. I don't know what ails our roses, but we can't make them do, somehow. They seem to get a kind of blight when they're about half open, and what are not blighted are full of bugs. What do you do with the bugs? I don't see that you have any."