Hammond told his friend about his ramble over the hills, yonder, up above that homely bench called ‘Rest, and be Thankful,’ on the crest of Loughrigg Fell.  He was beginning to learn the names of the hills already.  Yonder darkling brow, rugged, gloomy looking, was Nab Scar; yonder green slope of sunny pasture, stretching wide its two arms as if to enfold the valley, was Fairfield; and here, close on the left, as he faced the lake, were Silver Howe and Helm Crag, with that stony excrescence on the summit of the latter known as the ’Lion and the Lamb.’  Lady Maulevrier’s house stood within a circle of mountain peaks and long fells, which walled in the deep, placid, fertile valley.

’If you are not too tired to see the gardens, we might show them to you before breakfast,’ said Maulevrier.  ’We have three-quarters of an hour to the good.’

’Half an hour for a stroll, and a quarter to make myself presentable after my long walk,’ said Hammond, who did not wish to face the dowager and Lady Lesbia in disordered apparel.  Lady Mary was such an obvious Tomboy that he might be pardoned for leaving her out of the question.

They set out upon an exploration of the gardens, Mary clinging to her brother’s arm, as if she wanted to make sure of him, and still carrying Angelina.

The gardens were as other gardens, but passing beautiful.  The sloping lawns and richly-timbered banks, winding shrubberies, broad terraces cut on the side of the hill, gave infinite variety.  All that wealth and taste and labour could do to make those grounds beautiful had been done—­the rarest conifers, the loveliest flowering shrubs grew and flourished there, and the flowers bloomed as they bloom only in Lakeland, where every cottage garden can show a wealth of luxurious bloom, unknown in more exposed and arid districts.  Mary was very proud of those gardens.  She had loved them and worked in them from her babyhood, trotting about on chubby legs after some chosen old gardener, carrying a few weeds or withered leaves in her pinafore, and fancying herself useful.

’I help ‘oo, doesn’t I, Teeven?’ she used to say to the gray-headed old gardener, who first taught her to distinguish flowers from weeds.

’I shall never learn as much out of these horrid books as poor old Stevens taught me,’ she said afterwards, when the gray head was at rest under the sod, and governesses, botany manuals, and hard words from the Greek were the order of the day.

Nine o’clock was the breakfast hour at Fellside.  There were no family prayers.  Lady Maulevrier did not pretend to be pious, and she put no restraints of piety upon other people.  She went to Church on Sunday mornings for the sake of example; but she read all the newest scientific books, subscribed to the Anthropological Society, and thought as the newest scientific people think.  She rarely communicated her opinions among her own sex; but now and then, in strictly masculine and superior society, she had been heard to express herself freely upon the nebular hypothesis and the doctrine of evolution.