“I can’t go very early,” observed Lucy, hesitating, “for I sha’n’t leave home before you come from the office.”
“It’s a slack time, and I’ll get away sharp,” returned Tom, while Hugh’s face, which had clouded, cleared, and he danced to and fro between his mother and his friend.
So Lucy wrote to Florence, and told her she might expect to see her between five and six next evening.
(To be continued.)
OUR LILY GARDEN.
PRACTICAL AIDS TO THE CULTURE OF LILIES.
By CHARLES PETERS.
A visit to the royal gardens at Kew is always a pleasant holiday. There is so much to see and admire, and so very much of what is quite new and unexpected, that all lovers of flowers must look both forward to and backwards at their visits to England’s greatest garden.
We remember strolling into the gardens on a June day last year. The weather was fine and warm, and the gardens were at their very best. We had been into the various greenhouses; had duly admired the airy lightness of the filmy ferns; had marvelled at the stalky palm or the ridiculous cactus (one of the latter we can never forget, for it bore a great pink blossom on what might have been mistaken for a savage’s club!) We had seen the great leaves of the Victoria lily, with its huge flower-bud not yet open; we had viewed with interest the curious sacred bean, and had been half-stifled in the dense atmosphere of the tropical orchid house. But it was not among the rare productions of the tropics; it was not in the greenhouse in which the choicest of flowers are exhibited in tasteful combination; it was not among the curious and beautiful orchids that the finest flower of June was to be seen.