Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/40

36 I told about the studio and my first father and mother."

"All right then, but when the porter gets to our section we must stop talking and go to bed."

"Begin!" she commanded, her eyes shining in anticipation. "Tell about your home first and then your mother and father and sisters and brothers."

"My home is, at least has been, beautiful. I did not know how beautiful until I left it and saw other places similar to it that have been kept up. My father doesn't take much interest in such things and neither did my grandfather before him. It was some way-back ancestor who planned it. Some day I hope to restore it. The place is called The Hedges, because it has a hedge all around the yard. Then there is a sunken garden with another hedge around it. That sunken garden is where I used to play when I was a little chap; and my mother would sit and sew and read and watch me play. There is a fountain with a marble boy holding up a shell, and a stone basin all bordered with moss and ferns. The beds are full of flowers that come up year after year and grow of themselves. I used to keep them weeded but since I have been off to college I fancy my mother and sister have looked after them. There is a sun-dial too,