Lady Mary was such an obvious Tomboy that he might be pardoned for leaving her out of the question.
They set out upon an exploration of the gardens, Mary clinging to her brother's arm, as if she wanted to make sure of him, and still carrying Angelina.
The gardens were as other gardens, but passing beautiful.

The sloping lawns and richly-timbered banks, winding shrubberies, broad terraces cut on the side of the hill, gave infinite variety.

All that wealth and taste and labour could do to make those grounds beautiful had been done--the rarest conifers, the loveliest flowering shrubs grew and flourished there, and the flowers bloomed as they bloom only in Lakeland, where every cottage garden can show a wealth of luxurious bloom, unknown in more exposed and arid districts.

Mary was very proud of those gardens.

She had loved them and worked in them from her babyhood, trotting about on chubby legs after some chosen old gardener, carrying a few weeds or withered leaves in her pinafore, and fancying herself useful.
'I help 'oo, doesn't I, Teeven ?' she used to say to the gray-headed old gardener, who first taught her to distinguish flowers from weeds.
'I shall never learn as much out of these horrid books as poor old Stevens taught me,' she said afterwards, when the gray head was at rest under the sod, and governesses, botany manuals, and hard words from the Greek were the order of the day.
Nine o'clock was the breakfast hour at Fellside.