"Do tell me what you mean!" cried Hildegarde.

Miss Merryweather laughed.

"If you are quite sure you won't mind?" she said, tentatively.
"Well, your place is so beautiful,--even apart from this--this--
bower of nymphs,--it is so shadowed with great trees, and so green
with old turf, that when I saw you this morning walking under the
tree, I made up a romance about you,--a pretty little romance. You
are quite sure you don't mind? You were the last of an ancient
family, and you were very delicate, and your mother kept you in
this lovely solitude, hoping to preserve your precious life. And
now," she burst into a clear peal of laughter, in which Hildegarde
joined heartily, "now I see you near, and you are no more delicate
than I am, and you are not the last of an ancient family. At
least, I hope you are not," she cried, growing suddenly grave.

"Oh! do you like to make romances?" cried Hildegarde, with ready
tact waiving the last question. "It is my delight, too. No, I am
not in the least delicate, as you say, and we have only been here
two years, my mother and I; yet it seems like home, and I hope we
shall always live here now. And are you beginning to feel at all
settled in,--I don't know any name for your house; we have called
it just the 'Yellow House' as it had no special interest, being
uninhabited. But I suppose you will give it a name?"

"If we can decide on one!" said Bell Merryweather, laughing. "The
trouble is, there are so many of us to decide. I want to call it
Gamboge: brief, you see, and simple. But one boy says it must be