XIX 

 PANDORA'S CHEST 



(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 

 Woodridge, October 10. Nearly a month of pen 

 silence on my part, during which I have felt many 

 times as if I must go from one to another of our chosen 

 trees in the river woods and shake the leaves down 

 so that the transplanting might proceed forthwith, 

 lest the early winter that Amos Opie predicts both 

 by a goose bone and certain symptoms of his own 

 shall overtake us. Be this as it may, the leaves thus 

 far prefer their airy quarters to huddling upon the 

 damp ground. 



However, there is another reason for haste more 

 urgent than the fear of frost the melancholy vein 

 that you predicted we should find in Meyer is fast 

 developing, and as we wish to have him leave us in a 

 perfectly natural way, we think it best that his stay 

 shall not be prolonged. At first he seemed not only 

 absorbed by his work and to enjoy the garden and 

 especially the river woods, but the trees and water 

 rushing by. 



365 



