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THE END OF THE WINTER.

Through the silent time after the falling of the leaves,
the two houses, the Jubilee and the Little Low, running end to
end along the south-easterly wing of the old homestead, stand on
most days - when once the autumnal onslaught of hosing and scrub-
bing, of painting and mending of broken panes is at an end -
empty of workers. The group of brothers and a helper or so la-
boured for a week of the shortening afternoons up and down the
linked houses, concentrated pleasantly at hand within call of
the women of the household - working in the kitchen and store
rooms along the roomy wing. No laborious collection for that
week, peach-house week, at the lamp-lit tea hour, of men folks
dispersed over the darkening gardens; for the long three-windowed
morning room runs at right angles to the wing, and one has but
to speak through the nearest opening to the nearest worker. At
the utmost one need but go through the doorway giving direct from
the room into the Jubilee House, and standing in the vague light
on the dry security of the red-brick flooring under the towering
mimosa, where the grouped begonias, the palm ferns, and the great
tub of Bougainvillea raise the spot to the dignity of a
"conservatory" six feet square - challenge the dim forms scattered
along the vista.

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The laborious week left the sweep of glass, sloping from
the parapet of the wing down to the basis of brickwork, clear for
its share of gathering the wintry rays and casting them upon the
rich length of the freshly whitewashed wall. Its framework, new-
painted to a flawless soundness, can harbour no robbers of the
treasure house, and in the multitude of tiny panes there is no
crack through which a blasting chill might creep. Right and left,
dark and rich, newly-turned and nourished lie the wide strips of
living tilth. With outspread limbs, every tiny branch transfixed,
the graceful arcs of the peach trees succeed one another along
the dazzling wall space, the delicate tracery of the twigs, the
unerring sweep of the branches, chained to earth by the sturdy
rounded stem. Their companions across the way stand in dimmer
outline, their upper branches curving inwards with the slope of
the glass, their trunks hidden beneath the shadow of the staging.
Boxes of naked earth stand ranged along the lower shelf in the
gloom, while above a little forest of "cuttings" shares the sun
with the sleeping trees. The Little Low is filled, too, with
pinioned promise on bright wall and sloping glass, but stands,
clear of staging, a chamber, in the morning hours, of golden light.

Of all the five ways into the garden the way through the
peach houses is, in the winter days, the pleasantest. The front
door grants a sense of the hill, for you see the sweep of the

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dew-soaked, rain-drenched emerald meadows down to the salt-marches,
and the bare landscape gives you the utmost stretch of the horizon
and sea, of the ceaseless pageant of light across the scene. And
there are the still warm days when you may take your long chair
out into the gravelled space and sit, as it were, in the wide pic-
ture. Watching the flight of birds across the sky, you may forget
the house and the prim evergreens standing along the fencing and
clumped on the neat circular central bed, and all the cramped en-
closure of the beloved garden acres away behind you. But on many
days coming through the vestibule, a little gabled classhouse stuck
on the face of the dwelling, you must battle with the unimpeded
south-west wind for your right of way, and struggling across the
"front" may win, battered and blown, through the creaking lichen-
covered wicket to the shelter of the flower garden. The four rear-
ward exits are populous gangways taking you to the wide lawn, where
all day the pigeons, their summer bravery in muddy draggled abey-
ance, gurgle and peck, and beyond to the colony of vineries and
fern and orchid houses, sightly and stirring - when you have earned
familiarity with the procession of their warm inner abundance -
sloping gently down towards the valley. Rolling away as far as the
eye can reach is the inland country, stretch beyond stretch, dotted
with farm and oast and windmill, rich in patches of ancient weald,
of plantation and copse.

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But to reach the flower garden from this side you must
face the adventure of the muddy furrowed stable-yard, you must
storm the potting-shed and tussle with the warped doorway in the
old wall. In the glimmering of the winter mornings, when only a
peep from your windows has certified the distant coastline and
the nether country, you may make your way along the silent peach
houses and discern through the dew-dimmed glass the outlines of
the espaliers, the narrow box-edged pathways, and the high pro-
tecting ruddy wall of the deserted garden - keeping between house
and wing and wall a sheltered peaceful space - nor will your pil-
grimage be complete until you have felt under your feet, along
the avenues of silent rose-sticks, the damp-bound gravel pathways.

But the days of drenching rain and the rare days of driving
snow, depriving you of your garden, give to the twin houses their
final triumph, and in the bleak time in the New Year, when out-
door contacts are blurred and muffled and progress is a tingling
struggle with the north wind and the log fire seems the very heart
of life, you may forget under the high roof the ache of winter,
whenever the sun shines. And at night, when long social sitting
by lamp and firelight has dulled your faculties, what better fate
than to be deputed to look round the precious houses. Supplied
with a flickering, swinging lamp you go through the dim old hall
and long empty room to the door of the Jubilee. And here, if you
are wise, you will discard your lamp and grope your way into

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the fresh darkness. At the first moment when the complaining hinges have closed behind you, it is a black immensity of rich air, bringing you back to life. Into your deep draughts the sleeping plants cast their fragrant spell. They stand about you in the darkness nearer than ever by day. If you will wait for a moment, motionless, it is as if the enclosed atmosphere held the faint, faint sound of their slumber. Presently the glimmering of the night coming through the frost-encrusted panes shows the dim black masses and the hanging draperies, and you must go your pleasant way along the echoing floor, and test the security of door and window fastening.

Entering one morning, when February has dawned in a week of rain, you will suffer glad arrest. Life, welling up, has uttered from the hard, smooth, brown side of a shiny sturdy twig, a star, faint rose, purest, tenderest. The spell of the winter is broken. Rain or no, you must go out now upon the boggy "lawn" for the buds will be large on the sycomore tree, the frame violets have all opened at once, and the near bare woodlands have flushed to a dim purpling, to a tawny crimsoning blue. The Summer of your garden is on its way again, and between you and the loveliness of the long June days lies Spring.