ness are forgiven, there that I feel
protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every
tree a lover. When I have been vexed I run out to them for comfort,
and when I have been angry without just cause, it is there that I find
absolution. Did ever a woman have so many friends? And always the same,
always ready to welcome me and fill me with cheerful thoughts. Happy
children of a common Father, why should I, their own sister, be less
content and joyous than they? Even in a thunder storm, when other people
are running into the house, I run out of it. I do not like thunder
storms--they frighten me for hours before they come, because I always
feel them on the way; but it is odd that I should go for shelter to the
garden. I feel better there, more taken care of, more petted. When
it thunders, the April baby says, "There's lieber Gott scolding those
angels again." And once, when there was a storm in the night, she
complained loudly, and wanted to know why lieber Gott didn't do the
scolding in the daytime, as she had been so tight asleep. They all three
speak a wonderful mixture of German and English, adulterating the purity
of their native tongue by putting in English words in the middle of a
German sentence. It always reminds me of Justice tempered by Mercy. We
have been cowslipping to-day in a little wood dignified by the name of
the Hirschwald, because it is the happy hunting-ground of innumerable
deer who fight there in the autumn evenings, calling each other out to
combat with bayings that ring through the silence and send agreeable
shivers through the lonely listener. I often walk there in September,
late in the evening, and sitting on a fallen tree listen fascinated to
their angry cries.

We made cowslip balls sitting on the grass. The babies had never seen
such things nor had imagined anything half so sweet. The Hirschwald is
a little open wood of silver birches and springy turf starred with
flowers, and there is a tiny stream meandering amiably about it and
decking itself in June with yellow flags. I have dreams of having a
little cottage built there, with the daisies up to the door, and no path
of any sort--just big enough to hold myself and one baby inside and a
purple clematis outside. Two rooms--a bedroom and a kitchen. How scared
we would be at night, and how completely happy by day! I know the exact
spot where it should stand, facing south-east, so that we should get
all the cheerfulness of