September - Page 2

stepping-stone to something better.

I had a visitor last week who knows a great deal
about gardening and has had much practical experience.
When I heard he was coming, I felt I wanted to put my arms right
round my garden and hide it from him; but what was my surprise
and delight when he said, after having gone all over it, "Well, I
think you have done wonders." Dear me, how pleased I was!
It was so entirely unexpected, and such a complete novelty
after the remarks I have been listening to all the summer.
I could have hugged that discerning and indulgent critic,
able to look beyond the result to the intention, and appreciating
the difficulties of every kind that had been in the way.
After that I opened my heart to him, and listened reverently to all
he had to say, and treasured up his kind and encouraging advice,
and wished he could stay here a whole year and help me through
the seasons. But he went, as people one likes always do go,
and he was the only guest I have had whose departure made me sorry.

The people I love are always somewhere else and not able
to come to me, while I can at any time fill the house with
visitors about whom I know little and care less. Perhaps, if I
saw more of those absent ones, I would not love them so well--
at least, that is what I think on wet days when the wind is
howling round the house and all nature is overcome with grief;
and it has actually happened once or twice when great friends
have been staying with me that I have wished, when they left,
I might not see them again for at least ten years. I suppose
the fact is, that no friendship can stand the breakfast test,
and here, in the country, we invariably think it our duty
to appear at breakfast. Civilisation has done away with curl-papers,
yet at that hour the soul of the Hausfrau is as tightly screwed
up in them as was ever her grandmother's hair; and though
my body comes down mechanically, having been trained that way
by punctual parents, my soul never thinks of beginning to wake up
for other people till lunch-time, and never does so completely
till it has been taken out of doors and aired in the sunshine.
Who can begin conventional amiability the first thing in the morning?
It is the hour of savage instincts and natural tendencies;
it is the triumph of the Disagreeable and the Cross.
I am convinced that the Muses and the Graces never thought
of having breakfast anywhere but in bed.