year round. In seasons when there is not
much doing in the ground, they are employed
in mending garden tools, painting and repairing
hand-lights—three thousand in number—
besides frames and other "plant."

My conductor regrets that he has little
more to tell me; but I assure him that I
have heard and seen enough to convince me
of the extraordinary skill and pains with
which market gardens are cultivated.

"Why, sir; we do all naturally try every
means for producing a good thing. Look at
that field of cauliflowers, for instance."

"Cauliflowers! I don't see a sign of blossom
on any of them."

"No! If they were allowed to be exposed
to the sun, they would turn yellow in a few
days. Every morning the outer leaves of the
plant are folded, one by one, over the flower.
Each one, I may say, is regularly nursed and
brought up by hand. My man, I'll warrant,
knows every plant individually by the shape
of the head and the varied paleness of
countenance. Open the leaves, and look into them.
You will find the flower as white as snow.
We never allow even a drop of wet to fall on
it. If it were to begin to rain suddenly, you
would see our people leave whatever work
they might be upon, and rush away to cover
them immediately with those bell-shaped
glasses, which dazzle our eyes so with the
sun. All the ground about them has been
covered with straw, or mulched, as we call it.
We use straw for everything now. Notice
that acre of cucumber frames yonder: though
the plants grow upon deep hot-beds, and are
all under glass we keep every frame embedded
and covered with straw. The beautiful white
seakale you find in the market is blanched by
simply covering it with straw. That pinky
rhubarb, which you see in winter and early
spring, is forced by the same means. Straw
is the market-gardener's sun-blind."

Having now made the circuit of the grounds,
we pry into seed-sheds, and sheds full of
paint pots, and plumbers' tools, and broken
frame-lights, and into out-houses full of
garden implements, and huge man-traps—
some with shark-like double rows of teeth;
others, of the sort called the humane mantrap,
because they snap the bone of a man's leg
smoothly and do not make a compound fracture
like the old-fashioned ones. These, I
understand, are only to be set when that fearless
aeronaut who lately trailed his grappling-iron
through my friend's cucumber frames, and
attended by a numerous train of followers,
accomplished an easy descent in his flower-
garden, shall announce another ascent in the
Royal Mammoth Balloon. Which fact we
reserve to the last, in the hope that it may
meet the eye of that renowned and intrepid
individual, and induce him to shape his course
accordingly.

The way home is through the cart-yard;
where rows of waggons stacked and ready for
to-morrow's market remind me that I have
another chapter to write in vegetable history.
Therefore, if there be any sluggards, who,
when awakened too soon, are heard to
complain, and in whose gardens the thorn and the
thistle grow higher and higher, let them be
warned in time that we intend to arouse them
at daybreak one fine morning, with a
summons to accompany us to Covent Garden
Market.

THE SENSITIVE MOTHER.

"WHEN you are married, Isabel, and have
children of your own, you will then know how
much I love you."

"I know you love me, dear mother. If I
did not acknowledge and understand your
love, what should I be but the most
ungrateful of living beings?"

"No one who is not a mother herself can
rightly understand a mother's love. What
you feel for me, and what you fancy I feel for
you, comes no nearer the reality, Isabel, than
the chirp of the sparrow does to the song of
the nightingale. The fondest child does not
fully return the love of the coldest mother."

Tears came into Isabel's eyes; for her
mother spoke in tender, querulous accents
of uncomplaining wrong, which went to the
daughter's heart. Mrs. Gray was one of
those painfully introspective people who live
on themselves; who think no one loves as
they love, no one suffers as they suffer; who,
believe they give their heart's blood to
receive back ice and snow, and who pass
their lives in agonising those they would die to
benefit. A more lonely-hearted woman never,
in her own opinion, existed, although her
husband had, she thought, a certain affection
from habit for her; but any real heart
sympathy, any love equal to her fond
adoration of him, was no more like her own
feelings than stars are equal to the noon-day
sun.

"Not a bad simile, my dear," Mr. Gray once
answered, with his pleasant smile, "since the
stars are suns themselves; and if we could
change our point of view we might find them
even bigger and brighter than our own sun.
Who knows but after all, I, who am such a
clod compared to you—who am, you say, so
cold and unimaginative—that my star is not
a bigger stronger sun than yours."

His wife gave back a pale smile of patient
suffering, and said sadly: "Ah, Herbert! if
you knew what agony I endure when you
turn my affection into ridicule, you would
surely spare me."

The frank, joyous husband was, as he
expressed it, "shut up for the evening."
And then Mrs. Gray wept gently, and called
herself the "family kill-joy."

With her daughter it was the same. Isabel's
whole soul and life were devoted to her
mother. She was the centre round which
that young existence steadily revolved. The
daughter had not a thought of which her