Three generations

246 THE THIRD GENERATION
Later still, we bought and lived in a house on the
outskirts of Cupar. This house was surrounded by
trees, had a really fine walled garden, and a good
avenue of its kind.
Brought up in a nearly treeless district, so that I
was quite a big girl when one of my sisters, who had
not always lived in the same locality, took pity on
my ignorance, and taught me to know one tree from
another, it is difficult for me to convey the charm
which the modest copse and the shady avenue, with
their numerous singing birds, had for me. The avenue
was rendered specially attractive by its tall elms and
limes, its dark Irish yews, its one much-prized Italian
stone pine, and its contrasting gay touches (which I
suppose were solecisms in an avenue proper) made by
the white blossoms of the gean and the rowan (the^
wild cherry and the mountain - ash), the wax -like
berries of the snowberry, the fragrant purple plumes
of the lilac, the long sprays of the laburnum " drop-
ping living gold," and the pink wild roses of the avenue
rose-trees.
The extensive garden, of which we had to let the
half, as it far exceeded our needs, even when we were
a family enlarged by three governesses and ten
boarders, held many varieties of approved fruit-trees,
and vegetables galore, with ample room left for large
strawberry and gooseberry brakes. There was still
space for a host of old-fashioned flowers — those
which liked best to be let alone, and to grow undis-
turbed, save by reasonable manuring. Such were tall
lupins, purple and white ; tall phloxes, purple and white ;
huge crimson peonies, lilies of many kinds. I never
beheld elsewhere such innumerable specimens of daffo-
dils, varying in yellow from amber to primrose, and