s so unable to work that for twenty minutes he sat over a pleasant
little essay on Shakespear's garden that by means of a concordance and
his natural aptitude he was writing for the book of the National
Shakespear Theatre, without adding a single fancy to its elegant
playfulness. Then he decided he needed his afternoon's walk after all,
and he took cap and stick and went out, and presently found himself
surveying that yellow and blue board and seeing it from an entirely new
point of view....

It seemed to him that he hadn't made the best use of his conversational
opportunities, and for a time this troubled him....

Toward the twilight he was walking along the path that runs through the
heather along the edge of the rusty dark ironstone lake opposite the
pine-woods. He spoke his thoughts aloud to the discreet bat that flitted
about him. "I wonder," he said, "whether I shall ever set eyes on her
again...."

In the small hours when he ought to have been fast asleep he decided she
would certainly take the house, and that he would see her again quite a
number of times. A long tangle of unavoidable detail for discussion
might be improvised by an ingenious man. And the rest of that waking
interval passed in such inventions, which became more and more vague and
magnificent and familiar as Mr. Brumley lapsed into slumber again....

Next day the garden essay was still neglected, and he wrote a pretty
vague little song about an earthly mourner and a fresh presence that set
him thinking of the story of Persephone and how she passed in the
springtime up from the shadows again, blessing as she passed....

He pulled himself together about midday, cycled over to Gorshott for
lunch at the clubhouse and a round with Horace Toomer in the afternoon,
re-read the poem after tea, decided it was poor, tore it up and got
himself down to his little fantasy about Shakespear's Garden for a good
two hours before supper. It was a sketch of that fortunate poet (whose
definitive immortality is now being assured by an influential committee)
walking round his Stratford garden with his daughter, quoting himself
copiously with an accuracy and inappropriateness that reflected more
credit upon his heart than upon his head, and saying in addition many
distinctively Brumley things. When Mrs. Rabbit, with a solicitude
acquired from the late Mrs. Brumley, asked him how he had got on with
his work--the sight of verse on his paper had made her anxious--he cou