ple blossoms on the study table.

"Well," I said, "when shall we start?"

"To-morrow."

Rosalind has a habit of swift decision when she has settled a question
in her own mind, and I was not surprised when she replied with a single
decisive word. But she also has a habit of making thorough preparation
for any undertaking, and now she was quietly proposing to go off for
the summer the very next day, and not a trunk was packed, not a seat
secured in any train, not a movement made toward any winding up of
household affairs. I had great faith in her ability to execute her
plans with celerity, but I doubted whether she could be ready to turn
the key in the door, bid farewell to the milkman and the butcher, and
start the very next day for the Forest of Arden. For several past
seasons we had planned this bold excursion into a country which few
persons have seemed to know much about since the day when a poet of
great fame, familiar with many strange climes and peoples, found his
way thither and shared the golden fortune of his journey with all the
world. Winter after winter before the study fire, we had made merry
plans for this trip into the magical forest; we had discussed the best
methods of travelling where no roads led; we had enjoyed in
anticipation the surmises of our neighbours concerning our unexplained
absence, and the delightful mystery which would always linger about us
when we had returned, with memories of a landscape which no eyes but
ours had seen these many years, and of rare and original people whose
voices had been silent in common speech so many generations that only a
few dreamers like ourselves even remembered that they had ever spoken.
We had looked along the library shelves for the books we should take
with us, until we remembered that in that country there were books in
the running streams. Rosalind had gone so far as to lay aside a
certain volume of sermons whose aspiring note had more than once made
music of the momentary discords of her life; but I reminded her that
such a work would be strangely out of place in a forest where there
were sermons in stones. Finally we had decided to leave books behind
and go free-minded as well as free-hearted. It had been a serious
question how much and what apparel we should take with us, and that
point was still unsettled when the apple trees came to their
blossoming. It is a theory of mine that the chief delight of a
vacation from one's usual occupations