[Aldershot.] May Day, 1870.

...  I have got some work into my head which has been long seething there, and will, I think, begin to take shape.  It is about flowers—­the ancestry of flowers; whether the flowers will tell their own family records, or what the plot will be I have not yet planned, and it will take me some time to collect my data, but the family histories of flowers which came originally from old Mexico in the days of Montezuma, and the floating gardens, and the warriors who wore nosegays, and the Indians who paddled the floating gardens on which they lived up the waters of that gorgeous city with early vegetables for the chiefs—­would be rather weird!  And then the strange fashions and universal prevalence of Japanese gardening.  The wistaria rioting in the hedges, and the great lilies wild over the hills.  Ditto the camellias.  With all the queer little thatched Japanese huts that always have lumps of iris on the top, which the Japanese ladies use for bandoline.  Then the cacti would have queer legends of South America, where the goats climb the steep rocks and dig them up with their horns and roll them down into the valley, and kick and play with them till the spines get rubbed off, and then devour them at leisure.  I give you these instances in case anything notable about flowers comes in your way, “when found to make a note of” for me....

TO MRS. ELDER.

Ecclesfield, October 25, 1871.

MY DEAREST AUNT HORATIA,

Your letter was shown to me, and I cannot tell you how much obliged to you I am for the prospect of the gold thimble, a thing I have always wished to possess.

I—­(if it fits!!!  But, as I told Charlie, if it is too big I can wrap a sly bit of rag round my finger, but if it’s too small, unless I cut the tip, as Cinderella’s sisters cut their heels, I don’t know how I can secure it!) shall additionally value it as a testimony of your approval of my dear old Hermit[37], for that is one of my greatest favourites amongst my efforts.  Miss Yonge prefers it, I believe, to anything I have ever done, and Rex nearly so....

Your loving niece, J.H.E.

[Footnote 37:  “The Blind Hermit and the Trinity Flower,” vol. xvi.]

TO C.T.  GATTY.

Aldershot.  Holy Innocents, 1871,

...  I had the very latest widow here for two days “charring.”  She is the lady alluded to by Rex when he told Stephen that she had been weighed, and was found wanting.  In justice to her physique, I must say that this was not according to avoirdupois measure!! but figurative.  She whipped about as nimbly as an elephant.  She was rather given to panting and groaning.  You can fancy her. [Sketch.] “Mrs. Hewin, ma’am, don’t soil your ’ands! Let