tangled garden--late roses, asters, marigold, sweet mignonette,
and feathery asparagus--of the wilderness which someone had once
meant to make into an orchard, but which was now, as Father said,
'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of baby
cherry-trees'. They thought of the view across the valley, where
the lime-kilns looked like Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, and
they thought of their own sandpit, with its fringe of yellowy
grasses and pale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the little
holes in the cliff that were the little sand-martins' little
front doors. And they thought of the free fresh air smelling of
thyme and sweetbriar, and the scent of the wood-smoke from the
cottages in the lane--and they looked round old Nurse's stuffy
parlour, and Jane said--

'Oh, how different it all is!'

It was. Old Nurse had been in the habit of letting lodgings,
till Father gave her the children to take care of. And her rooms
were furnished 'for letting'. Now it is a very odd thing that no
one ever seems to furnish a room 'for letting' in a bit the same
way as one would furnish it for living in. This room had heavy
dark red stuff curtains--the colour that blood would not make a
stain on--with coarse lace curtains inside. The carpet was
yellow, and violet, with bits of grey and brown oilcloth in odd
places. The fireplace had shavings and tinsel in it. There was
a very varnished mahogany chiffonier, or sideboard, with a lock
that wouldn't act. There were hard chairs--far too many of
them--with crochet antimacassars slipping off their seats, all of
which sloped the wrong way. The table wore a cloth of a cruel
green colour with a yellow chain-stitch pattern round it. Over