sting into
tears at the pathos of the neglect. "Did you think we had forgotten
you?" he said as he hugged it. I suggested that he should have a good
meal. "I don't think he would care about GRASS," said Alec
thoughtfully, "he shall have some leaves and berries for a treat." And
this was tenderly executed. Maud went off to see some of her old
pensioners, and came back glowing with pleasure, with twenty pleasant
stories of welcome. Two or three people came in to see me on business,
and I was glad to feel I was of use. In the afternoon we all went off
on a long ramble together, and we were quite surprised to see that
everything seemed to be in its place as usual. Summer is over, the
fields have been reaped; there is a comfortable row of stacks in the
rickyard; the pleasant humming of an engine came up the valley, as it
sang its homely monotone, now low, now loud. After tea--the evenings
have begun to close in--I went off to my study, took out my notebook
and looked over my subjects, but I could make nothing of any of them. I
could see that there were some good ideas among them; but none of them
took shape. Often I have found that to glance over my subjects thus,
after a holiday, is like blowing soap-bubbles. The idea comes out
swelling and eddying from the bowl; a globe swimming with lucent hues,
reflecting dim moving shapes of rooms and figures. Not so to-day. My
mind winked and flapped and rustled like a burnt-out fire; not in a
depressed or melancholy way, but phlegmatically and dully. Well, the
spirit bloweth as it listeth; but it is strange to find my mind so
unresponsive, with none of that pleasant stir, that excitement that has
a sort of fantastic terror about it, such as happens when a book
stretches itself dimly and mysteriously before the mind--when one has a
glimpse of a quiet room with people talking, a man riding fiercely on
lonely roads, two strolling together in a moonlit garden with the
shadows of the cypresses on the turf, and the fragrance of the sleeping
flowers blown abroad. They stop to listen to the nightingale in the
bush . . . turn to each other . . . the currents of life are
intermingled at the meeting of the lips, the warm shudder at the touch
of the floating tress of fragrant hair. To-day nothing comes to me; I
throw it all aside and go to see the children, am greeted delightfully,
and join in some pretty and absurd game. Then dinner comes; and I sit
afterwards reading, dropping the book to talk,