Book excerpt: The novel is set in and around "Uncle Corny's" garden near Sunbury-on-Thames. The story turns on the love of Kit, the market-gardener's nephew, for Kitty, the daughter of a good but foolish scientific man, who has succeeded in making his own and his daughter's life miserable by marrying a second wife. This lady and her son Donovan are the villains of the story, and by their machinations poor Kit and Kitty are separated and made miserable. The course of true love is thwarted both before and after marriage: Kitty, for example, being stolen from her bridegroom during the honeymoon. Poetic justice is amply wreaked in the end on all ill-doers in an accumulation of horrors