On the other stretches the little valley, a narrow strip of land, but with turf as fine as the Queen's lawn, and trees that would proudly grace Her Majesty's park,--tall Norway firs, raising their stately forms and pointing their long dark fingers sternly at the intruders on their solitude; graceful birches; and here and there a whispering larch or a nodding pine.

The other wall of the valley, or glen, is less precipitous, and its sides are densely wooded, and fringed with barberry bushes and climbing eglantine.
And between these two banks, and over this green velvet carpet, and among these dark fir-trees,--ah! how the sun shines.

Nowhere else in the whole land does he shine so sweetly, for he knows that his time there is short, and that the high banks will shut him out from that green, pleasant place long before he must say good-night to the more common-place fields and hill-sides.

So here his beams rest right lovingly, making royal show of gold on the smooth grass, and of diamonds on the running water, and of opals and topazes and beryls where the wave comes curling over the little fall.
And now, amid all this pomp and play of sun and of summer, what is this dash of blue that makes a strange, though not a discordant, note in our harmony of gold and green?
And what is that round, whitish object which is bobbing up and down with such singular energy?
Why, the blue is Hildegarde's dress, if you must know; and the whitish object is the head of Zerubbabel Chirk, scholar and devotee; and the energy with which said head is bobbing is the energy of determination and of study.

Hilda and Bubble have made themselves extremely comfortable under the great ash-tree which stands in the centre of the glen.