her more than in Dorset,
Somerset, and Devon, where it is threaded with gold and embroidered with
jewels toward the edge of sunset.

Of course, there's only the most fanciful dividing line between Somerset
and Devon, yet I imagine the two counties different in their attributes,
as well as in their graces. Surely in Somerset the Downs are on a
grander scale. Between two of them you are in a valley, and think that
you see mountains. In Devonshire you have wider horizons, save for the
lanes and hedges, which do their best to keep straying eyes fastened on
their own beauty.

I suppose men who never have left England take such beauty for granted,
but to me, after the flaunting luxuriance of the East, it is enchanting.
I notice everything. I want someone, who cares for it as I do, to admire
it with me. If it weren't for Dick Burden this England would be making
me twenty-one again.

You should see, to understand me, all the lovely things fighting
sportively for supremacy in these Devonshire hedges; the convolvulus
pretending to throttle the honeysuckle; the honeysuckle shaking creamy
fists in the faces of roses that push out, blushing in the starlight of
wild clematis, white and purple. Such gentle souls, these Devonshire
roses! Kind and innocent, like the sweet, sentimental "Evelinas" of
old-fashioned stories, yet full of health, and tingling with buds, as a
young girl with fancies.

Devonshire seems to express herself in flowers, as sterner counties do
in trees and rocks. Even the children one meets playing in the road are
flowers. They are to the pretty cottages what the sweetbriar is to the
hedges; and no background could be daintier for the little human
blossoms than those same thatched cottages with open, welcoming doors.

Ellaline, fascinated by glimpses through open doors--(old oak dressers
set with blue and white china; ancient clocks with peering moon-faces;
high-backed chairs; bright flowers in gilt vases on gate-legged tables,
all obscurely seen through rich brown shadows)--says she would like to
live in such a cottage with somebody she loved. Who will that somebody
be? I constantly wonder. I should think less of her if it could be Dick
Burden, or one of his type, yet Mrs. Senter hints that the girl likes
his society. _Can_ she?

We had a picnic luncheon on our way to Sidmouth, lingering rather long
(once you have stopped your motor, nothing matters. If you're happy, you
are as reluctant to go on as you are