June

June 3rd.--This is such an out-of-the-way corner of the world that it
requires quite unusual energy to get here at all, and I am thus delivered
from casual callers; while, on the other hand, people I love, or people
who love me, which is much the same thing, are not likely to be deterred
from coming by the roundabout train journey and the long drive at the end.
Not the least of my many blessings is that we have only one neighbour.
If you have to have neighbours at all, it is at least a mercy that there
should be only one; for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting
to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know,
and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction?
Besides, there is always the certainty that either you or the dropper-in
will say something that would have been better left unsaid, and I have
a holy horror of gossip and mischief-making. A woman's tongue is a
deadly weapon and the most difficult thing in the world to keep in order,
and things slip off it with a facility nothing short of appalling at
the very moment when it ought to be most quiet. In such cases the only
safe course is to talk steadily about cooks and children, and to pray
that the visit may not be too prolonged, for if it is you are lost.
Cooks I have found to be the best of all subjects--the most phlegmatic
flush into life at the mere word, and the joys and sufferings connected
with them are experiences common to us all.

Luckily, our neighbour and his wife are both busy and charming,
with a whole troop of flaxenhaired little children to keep
them occupied, besides the business of their large estate.
Our intercourse is arranged on lines of the most
beautiful simplicity. I call on her once a year, and she
returns the call a fortnight later; they ask us to dinner
in the summer, and we ask them to dinner in the winter.
By strictly keeping to this, we avoid all danger of that closer
friendship which is only another name for frequent quarrels.
She is a pattern of what a German country lady should be,
and is not only a pretty woman but an energetic and practical one,
and the combination is, to say the least, effective.
She is up at daylight superintending the feeding of the stock,
the butter-making, the sending off of the milk for sale;
a thousand things get done while most people are fast asleep,
and before lazy folk are well at breakfast she is off in her
pony-carriage to the other farms on the place, to rate the "mamsells,"
as the head women are called, to poke into every corner,
lift the lids off the saucepans, count the new-laid eggs,
and box, if necessary, any careless dairymaid's ears.
We are allowed by law to administer "slight corporal punishment"